


Indexicality

by Therrae (Dasha_mte)



Series: Xenoethnography [8]
Category: Transformers (Bay Movies), Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Animated (2007), Transformers Generation One, Transformers: Prime, Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2015)
Genre: Alien Culture, Anthropology, Canon Disabled Character, Dark Energon (Transformers), Ethnography, Interspecies Relationship(s), Kidfic, Other, Scraplets, cosmic horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:47:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 67,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27580219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dasha_mte/pseuds/Therrae
Summary: Parenthood.
Series: Xenoethnography [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/913458
Comments: 170
Kudos: 326





	1. Deictic Center (I, Here, Now)

Serenity lay on the floor of the balcony, her thin ‘chin’ propped up on delicate, five-fingered servos, watching Max chase a red spot.

Max was being very entertaining, leaping and scampering and grabbing with little paws. She was off the leash at the moment, so Slipstream was handling the laser pointer from a guard position at the stairs. Max. totally absorbed in her wily prey, was in no danger of wandering off, though.

The red dot raced up the side of the couch and over the back, Max in frantic pursuit. Two short ‘pigtails’ of flexible antennae strands followed every move—and then drooped abruptly. It was one of very few body-language ‘tells’ Serenity had, and it generally indicated she was turning attention inward to worry about something.

“Is something wrong, Serenity?”

“Do you think Max is sad that she is stupid?”

Slipstream’s vocalizer reset and the laser pointer flickered. “Max is an excellent cat!”

Kim waved him off and said firmly, “Max’s intelligence is different from yours or from mine, but exactly right for a cat. They see the world differently than we do.”

Serenity sat up, crossing humanly-proportioned ‘legs’ and shook her head. “Max hasn’t figured out the target has no mass and can’t be caught. This is not…appropriate intelligence for a predator species. If Max were not being taken care of, she would starve.”

Slipstream was charging capacitors. Kim snapped her fingers at him and shook her head. He shifted his attention to Kim, and scanned her in bafflement. No, that wouldn’t be a gesture he knew. Kim sighed. “Have you considered that Max knows she is playing, and it doesn’t matter that the dot cannot be captured.”

“Max doesn’t understand optics.”

“No, but Max’s brain is…hardwired for pleasurable feedback from the act of pouncing. Earth species play to gain skills. Like you and Hot Rod do trajectory calculations for fun.” On her last visit, Mearing had brought a box of ping-pong balls and a set of paddles. The children were enamored. “Landing on the spot fills her with… maybe the same feeling you get when you bounce the ball off two walls and score.”

The pigtails perked up. “Really?”

“Yes. Cats play. She might think the dot is just too fast or too small for her. But she doesn’t care.”

“May I try controlling the laser point?”

Slipstream began explaining the safety rules; as weak as the laser was, it could damage some organic sensors.

***

The first day after Serenity’s hatching had started early, although Kim had not gotten a lot of sleep the night before.

She came out just after six to visit the bathroom to find Carly and Chip at the entry way in deep conversation with someone on the other side. With a prick of nervousness, Kim hurried her trip to the loo and joined them at the door. “Good morning, Serenity. What do you think of humans?” 

“I have scanned them. It is amazing. Ratchet says I must ask before scanning humans.”

Kim looked past her shoulder to where Ratchet hovered attentively on the other side of the railing. “Ratchet is very wise,” she said. “He’s usually right. I think passive sonar would be okay, though, even if you didn’t ask.”

She nodded. “Humans are very noisy. May I scan you.”

“Tut,” Carly said. “I have already asked to scan _you_. It’s my turn.”

Serenity shifted on her feet. “Your scanners…are not very good.”

“True. So this will take a minute.” She made shooing motions. “Step back. I need space.”

Kim and Chip followed Carly onto the balcony. The floor here was metal and cold, and Kim spared a moment to regret not having gotten dressed before meeting the new baby. Carly was walking around her, peering into the wide seams and joints, examining the small head and forward-facing eyes. “How did you choose this structure?” she asked. “I understand there were many plans in the original files.”

“It is human shaped. I am from Earth.”

Carly nodded, leaned down—Serenity was only about three and a half feet tall—to look into a small opening that might be an ear. “What is your mass?”

“Two hundred and twelve kilograms.”

Chip frowned and Carly paused in her examination. “That’s very heavy. Are you sure?”

“I have lots of mass,” she wiggled, or, possibly, preened. “I am mostly protomatter. Ratchet said having a good protomatter base was essential for long term health.”

Kim glanced at Ratchet, who was _definitely_ preening. “She did an excellent job of growing,” he said.

Serenity, throughout this, had been looking at Chip. “Why are you not bipedal?” she asked. “In all of my files, humans are bipedal.”

“I’m bipedal. I…have a malfunction. Walking is difficult. Mostly, I use wheels.”

“You can say ‘ill,’” Kim reminded. “That idea will be in her lexicon.”

He frowned in puzzlement. “Your notes mention that. It doesn’t make sense. Unless you mean some kind of malignant replicating code. How can they be ill?”

Kim bit her lip. “Some kinds of problems with protomatter seem to be classified as illness rather than damage or malfunction.”

Ratchet sighed and rippled his optics.

“What?” Kim asked. “What part was wrong?”

“It wasn’t _wrong_ ,” he said pityingly, “Just so badly explained as to be useless.”

Kim smiled at him charmingly, “Maybe you could—”

“Can Ratchet fix you?” Serenity interrupted. “Ratchet is very good at fixing people.”

“I can’t fix humans,” Ratchet said, softening. “Nothing about their existence makes sense.”

Serenity leaned over Carly, who was crouched down with her nose only a few inches away from the complex mechanisms that formed the sparkling’s feet. “Why don’t humans repair you? Do humans have human doctors?”

“Humans have doctors. They don’t know how to fix this.”

Serenity went rigid and her optic lenses— each a single, broad camera instead of the complex arrays used by most of the adult mecha—blinked off and on several times.

“Hey!” Chip said sharply. “No freaking out! It’s a manageable problem. I do some things differently, but I’m okay. Human bodies….vary in ways mech bodies don’t.”

Ratchet had ended it then, with a general sour look for the humans who had upset his baby with their sloppy existing. It had been almost adorable—if Chip had not apologized once they were back in the dorm.

“It’s going to be endless hard questions and awkward conversations,” Kim said. “And we’re going to have to teach the babies boundaries—which, by the way, you are allowed to have. Just. Shake this one off and get ready for next time.” 

This had not, perhaps, been good advice. But it was the best she had.

***

In fact, Serenity was pretty exhausting. Like a human baby, she didn’t know about boundaries or separate front- from back- stage. Unlike human babies, she was independently mobile and fully vocal. She asked all the questions. She scanned everything. She quickly discovered ‘in,’ and checked every object to see if it opened and what was inside.

She had demanded to see the human side of NEST on her third day. When Optimus said, ‘not yet,’ she threw a tantrum and discovered the meaning of ‘time out.’ Ratchet took her to the privacy annex and shut off the wifi node.

She was curious about eating and excretion.

It was exhausting, but not unrelenting. Serenity’s curiosity was punctuated by unusually long shut downs as she made physical alterations to her body. For example, growing each of the strands in her tiny sensor pigtails had taken a nine-hour nap.

Given control of the laser pointer, she was careful and precise, aiming well away from Max’s face. The tiny red spot danced just ahead of the snatching paws. Soon, Serenity was making little clicks of mech laughter. Kim got some pictures and then took out her notebook to write the moment before it was gone.

It was Hound who showed up to take her for nap duty around noon. He already had Hot Rod draped along one shoulder.

Kim’s next appointment was with Blaster, who arrived with a metaphorical ‘stack’ of magazines. They were digital, of course. He sent the first to Kim’s phone and settled in to go through it a page at a time. “What are they advertising here?”

“Countertops,” Kim said.

“Does it make you wish to buy one?”

Kim sighed. “No. I am delighted with the countertops Fixit selected.”

“What about this page?”

“That’s a website that sells furniture.”

“Yes. Why does it show that room?”

“You know they’re trying to guess what sort of image, people want, right? And I don’t know who wants that. It’s expensive and spacious and impersonal.”

“I see,” Blaster said neutrally.

The next page was the contents. The one after that an advertisement for beer. “It’s okay. I haven’t tried that kind. I might. I wouldn’t mind having one I liked a lot, to order in restaurants. Not that I eat out much.” She had the salary for it now, but not the opportunity. Eating out was sadly limited in Jasper.

“This is for pet feed. You do not have a dog.”

“Nope. But that is really expensive dog food. I’m not sure—” But she was making a grown-up salary. And spending nothing on rent. She could afford to feed a dog pate, if she had one. “It’s hard to know what is the best nutrition.”

“Is it? I thought nutrition was fairly well understood.”

Kim snorted.

They paged through advertisements: a bank, hotdogs, fancy purse. And, oh, Kim understood why Blaster was doing this. It was tedious and exhausting—never mind embarrassing to delve into the trivial shit humans put so much effort into—but Kim had done the same sort of thing from the other side.

“ _Are_ deviled eggs the perfect party contribution?” Blaster asked doubtfully.

“Kind of is,” Kim said, scanning the article and recipe. “In my grad student days, well, eggs are cheap, and deviled eggs are very tasty, and they take _time_ , and you can’t buy them pre-made, so it shows you cared.”

Blaster considered. “You _can_ buy them pre-made.”

“Not _good_. You want them, you have to make them.”

“Right. File that. The next recipe is for soup. I understand solid food. Liquid food, makes sense as a necessity. But solid food floating in the liquid food…?”

“You all wrap energon in minerals,” Kim pointed out.

“As a practical method for transport, initially. And our buccal cavities are much more complex than yours. And if you shunt the contents to the wrong line, you clog the atmospheric scrubber.”

“That’s true,” Kim said slowly, blindsided by how incredibly inexplicable human eating was. “But soup isn’t usually the problem there.” This is why ethnography broke people. Kim rubbed her forehead.

“Do you like soup?” And that was another thing: fuel was a necessity, not a pleasure. Mecha greatly enjoyed _running_ on higher ratios of energon to artificial fuel, but the idea of doing things to energon to change its chemical reception on intake wouldn’t make sense to them. Kim, for her part, tried to imagine a meal where the greatest enjoyment came from _digestion_ rather than taste. It was a reach.

And now the question was, did she like soup? “I… like some soups very much. My stepmother makes this thing with chicken and wild rice and cream. And I like French onion soup. And I’ll eat canned soup if necessary.”

“When would soup be necessary?”

“Well. Cold weather. Or when you don’t feel well. Or if you’re out of other food.”

A pause. A long look. “Is this something that happens often? In your experience?”

“Oh. Well. I spent, like, _years_ as a grad student. And that’s…well, the money isn’t so bad you’re starving. But there isn’t always time to shop or energy to cook. Stop looking horrified.”

“How can you tell I’m horrified?”

“All your extra antennae pulled in.”

“Hm. So, when purchasing soup, how did you choose which soup you wanted?”

And on. And on. After soup, it was fruit juice, fancy tea, shoes, bedlinens, a theme park, cleaning supplies. Kim was thoroughly glad when Blaster had to leave for a military exercise with NEST.

She ducked into the kitchen to make a quick sandwich and ate it on the way to the ‘Bot commissary, where Chip was having a language lesson with Jazz. They were settled at one of the cubical stone ‘tables,’ and Chip had the keyboard out.

Kim watched from one side, not interrupting. Chip was very good. Slowly, resolutely, he put together strings of mech sounds into words. He didn’t need the keyboard for all of the sounds; he could make six distinct clicks with his mouth and whistle four of the high-pitched phonemes. Between his voice and the keyboard, he could repeat words or phrases he’d heard, if they were short. He couldn’t produce a spontaneous sentence yet, but his progress was fast. He was already better in less than two months than Kim had been after four.

When the lesson was over, Kim helped pack up the keyboard and joined Chip for the trip back to the balcony.

“Why are you wearing a bracelet that says ‘Energon?’ Is that a statement? Do I need one?”

Kim looked down at her arm, winced. “Yeah. We haven’t talked about that.” Was now the time to talk about that? He’d stayed for three weeks. He was emotionally invested. He already knew so many secret, dangerous things….

She had to warn him, if he was going to avoid it.

“I—”

“Where did you get it?”

“I made it to remind me…this is going to sound weird.”

“Okay? Compared to what?”

Kim stopped. She faced him squarely. She sighed. “Raw energon—the ore—it has this weird effect when humans, um, look at it.”

Very slowly, Chip turned his chair

and regarded Kim with a look that was probably meant to seem attentive and calm. He didn’t quite manage to hide the worry underneath. “Weird?”

Kim glanced around to make sure they weren’t blocking access, set down the keyboard, and looked at her bracelet. “It makes you uninterested in it.”

He frowned. “It’s so uninteresting you made a bracelet about it?”

“Yeah. To remind me—otherwise, I’d never think about it.”

He considered. “Carson the geologist. He said his job was actually pretty boring.”

Kim nodded. “Right.”

“So… energon rocks are abnormally boring.”

Kim rallied. “That’s the thing! They’re not. Aside from the fact that they are a really rare energy-bearing ore that we can’t determine the composition of, they’re pretty. Really pretty. With colors. Some of it facets, like big opal-diamonds that dayglow. But after you see it, you don’t want to touch it. Or own it. And you forget what you were wondering about it.”

“Okay, that’s not alarming at all.”

“It’s kind of alarming.” Wasn’t it?

“But it’s just humans, right? Not the Autobots?”

“No, of course not. They think about it all the time. All the patrols are looking for it, not just looking for Decepticons.”

“Right. Right.” He looked at Kim’s wrist. “And you remind yourself energon exists….”

“Um. Sort of. I mean, refined energon, the stuff they use, I don’t seem to have a block about that. Optimus—It’s a normal part of life with them. It’s their food and air and blood, a really pervasive metaphor, the babies—the only reason there could _be_ babies is that there was enough energon to feed them. But. I don’t think about where it comes from, and I forget that it is problematic that I don’t think about where it comes from.”

“ _Merde_.”

“Yeah! And I was going to—there was really something important about it I was going to tell you, but I’ve lost it.”

He was leaning slightly away from her now, as thought the weird forgetting might be contagious. “You were telling me that raw energon does some kind of weird mind control to make humans not notice it.”

“Right. Thanks. And at first, I thought, maybe if we had someone we had _warned_ before taking to see it, the effect might be resisted. But at this point,” Kim fingered the letter beads that spelled out e-n-e-r-g-o-n, “I think it is more important to make sure you aren’t…compromised by whatever this is. You mustn’t ever go to an energon mine and avoid samples….”

“Has it…has it hurt you? Otherwise?”

“Has what hurt me?”

His breath caught. “Seeing unprocessed energon?” he said weakly.

“Oh, right. No. My field is fine. My health is fine. They’ve watched for changes in my behavior. There is no sign it has done anything _else_ to me.”

“How did the Decepticons do this?”

“Oh. They didn’t. At least not recently. And probably not at all. Nothing about it….”

“Then who did?” He sounded shocked and panicked now. 

“Well. That’s actually the biggest problem about it. We don’t know.”

“Humans don’t know. And the Autobots don’t know?”

Kim shook her head. “Whatever did it, it happened before Isaac Newton. Apparently, there is some really obvious physics principal that should have been discovered or inferred at about the same time as gravity…or because of gravity. Anyway, whatever it is we _as a species_ can’t notice or deduce is so central to the way the universe works that Einstein invented special relativity to, sort of, wallpaper over the hole.”

“On, come on! You can’t be serious! This is—hazing the new guy.” It came out like a question.

Kim shook her head. “You minored in math, right? You covered special relativity at some point in college.”

“Scholar camp in high school….”

“Right. And it didn’t seem at all suspicious to you that _that_ is the explanation we settled on for space and time and light?”

Chip dropped his face into his hands. After a long moment, he whispered, “Oh, my god.”

“Something was done to all of us. Like, hundreds or thousands of years ago, to make us miss something really obvious about how the universe works.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

He looked up at her for a long moment, then closed his eyes. “Why are humans unable to understand proper physics?”

“Because this principle we can’t assume—or mathematical operation we can’t complete, or cause and effect we don’t notice—is what would let us use energon for something. We don’t notice the energon and we don’t have—can’t conceive of—the concepts that would let us use it if we did.”

“Oh, my god. I thought being chased by Ravage was literally the most terrifying thing I would ever have happen to me.”

“I’d let you take a few minutes to, you know, absorb this, but if I don’t keep my train of thought going, I’ll forget what we were talking about.”

“Damn. Okay. Okay. Is this physics we can’t do….related to the seventeen dimensional math that makes space travel and the Bridge work?”

“Well. Our physics and engineering would be further along if we had an accurate understanding of the universe, but…. Maggie understands a lot of Bridge math. I mean it’s hard and very complicated and she has to do it in an alien number system _that the aliens had to develop specifically to do that sort of weird math_. And even the individual ‘Bots here can’t do all the calculations alone. So, I don’t think that’s directly related to our species’ deficiency.”

“So you’re saying that at some point in history, Deceipticons or someone else came to Earth and messed with every single human brain so that they would never notice some really obvious law of physics _and_ pass this defect on to future generations _and_ made sure that if anyone ever saw energon they would lose interest in it, even though it’s really weird and pretty. Is that it?”

Kim took a deep breath. “Unless we evolved this way.”

“Why the fuck would we evolve this way!”

_Because we’re the spawn of Unicron, the demons in mech hell, and Unicron wouldn’t want his minions playing with his blood._ “Well look how evolution works—understanding some weird universal property isn’t necessary for survival day to day. Obviously. Why would we have something we didn’t need? Mecha were made, though, they didn’t evolve. Their ability to understand this might have been built in. They have to be able to understand their food. And we…don’t”

“Who made them?”

“According to them, Primus. But their prehistory is a couple of billion years older than ours, apparently.”

“Their memories are transmissible. A billion years shouldn’t—”

“There were also wars. The Quintessons destroyed a lot of the history they found inconvenient during the occupation.”

“So they don’t know where they come from. I thought they were being cagy.”

“Or it might actually be Primus. The God Primus, who also might be the planet Cybertron.”

“I can’t believe you waited this long to mention this.”

Kim shrugged. “Well. Cosmology, you know. It’s interesting, but not really the priority. I mean, everyone agrees Primus has turned away. The question of their god’s reality—”

“No, about the energon.”

“What about the energon?”

Chip reached out and gently tapped Kim’s bracelet. “Oh. Right. Focus. You work mainly here. They don’t bring the ore here. But yeah. If it ever does come up, you need to avoid it.” Kim bit her lip. “And maybe… I mean, yeah, the whole species is compromised. But you are less compromised than I am. So if you’d…watch me. Just in case.”

“In case what?”

“In case it makes me…weird.”

Chip began to laugh. He turned his face away and waved his hands vaguely. “How would I know? You just—Oh, god, you mean weirder than _this_. Because I’m the sane one?”

“Oh. Good. I seem to have actually explained.”

He stood up stiffly and began to pace. “Do you have any idea how terrifying this is!”

He was talking about humans losing interest in energon, she was fairly sure. She kept her eyes on the bracelet while she answered. “Well. It’s really scary. Yeah. But there’s a Decepticon dreadnaught in orbit. It would take a couple of months to slag all the Earth’s landmasses to glass, but it could do it. And if it just wanted to kill off all the humans, it could do that faster. And some of—some of my friends are going to die making sure that doesn’t happen.” Kim had to stop. Not crying was jamming up her throat and eyes. She squeezed down, holding her breath until the pain passed. “So. So if some _other_ aliens somewhere have messed with all our brains, well they aren’t here right _now_ and if we’re all dead in four and a half years,” or less, “it’s a moot point anyway.”

“Oh. Yeah. Okay.” He knotted his hands restlessly. “I hear you.”

“All this work may be for nothing,” Kim said. “We have to try anyway. Even if it all ends. Even if there’s no point….we can’t give up now.”

“No. You’re right. The fact that this might be for nothing, doesn’t change what we need to do now. That was always true. A meteor could drop on us tomorrow, we could go like the dinosaurs, like that.” He snapped his fingers. “That was always true. We have to keep on living.”

Keep on living. Kim cleared her throat and picked up the keyboard again. “Hey. Good news there. Our satellite telescopes are great now. Slipstream would let us know if we had any dangerous asteroids coming.”

“Oh,” he said faintly. “That’s nice.”

Kim’s evening meeting had been replaced by ‘patrol’ in the calendar. It had a notation that said to dress for cold weather. Canada again? Kim had a jacket and boots. Finding the gloves and scarf took opening all the plastic tubs piled in the corner. For patrol, she also snared an extra bottle of water and an MRE. And then another of each, because her first patrol had ended in being stranded hundreds of miles away from home.

Oh. Money. Also money.

He was waiting at the Bridge prep area, in alt, but not parked. Kim laid a hand gently against his grill, felt the tiny vibration of his torque engine. “Hello, Beloved Friend,” she whispered.

“Hello, Kim. That isn’t quite the right term.” Her phone buzzed and an unlabeled glyph came through.

It looked like boxes within boxes. “What does it mean?”

“Fish hatchery.”

Kim smiled, suddenly feeling warm and a little breathless. “Ah. Beloved fish hatchery,” she murmured.

He sighed. “Just a moment.” 

“Can we get close in _any_ human language?”

A soft click: amusement. “Bumblebee and Fixit have settled on ‘companion.’”

“Oh. Oh! That’s very nice.”

“It will do,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind an off-site foray?”

“Anywhere,” Kim answered, belatedly remembering that that kind of statement was revealingly affectionate.

His door clicked open. “Come in, then. It’s almost time for our connection.” He waited while she settled. “So, how did the Trunk-or-Treat go?”

“It was great. Absolutely adorable. You should have gone.”

“I cannot subspace quite enough mass to pass as a minivan.”

“Eh. We’d get some really big fangs for the front and throw a black cape over you and, poof! You’re a really big vampire truck.”

“Do I remind you of a monster, then?”

Kim snorted. “Fine. Giant fluffy ears. And paint a beachball white for a tail. You can go as a giant rabbit.” She sighed. “Next year we’ll have to take the sparklings.” They had been very upset when they’d heard about the Trunk-or-Treat and been forbidden to go this year. But really, they were too young to turn loose with civilians. No costume could cover up how alien they were. Or protect them from all the dangers in a human environment. They were mobile and could talk, but they were both still infants.

“I was thinking that in a few orns they could each – separately – go with Bumblebee on a short drive.”

“Inside him, right?”

“Of course. Just to look, for the first few times.”

“Shame we can’t just strap them into a car seat and take them to the mall.” Human children were tidy that way. But, of course, human children had a diaper stage.

“A car seat is not a bad idea.”

The warning chime sounded, and the Bridge’s shimmer flowed and swirled into place.

“Are you ready, Kim?”

She closed her eyes and gripped the seat under her from both sides. “Yes.”

When they came out, it was still pretty dark. Kim frowned and leaned forward. It wasn’t a cave. She could make out trees. And stars. “Is it nighttime? Where are we?”

“It’s three-thirty in the morning. In Pskov, south of Velikiye Luki.”

Kim turned that over several times. “We’re in Russia. In the middle of the night.”

“It is very early in the morning. Hm. I do not have a greeting for that.”

“No shit,” Kim muttered.

“During the day, the quarry is active. It is not possible to come close enough to scan the area thoroughly.”

“Oh. Well. Obviously.” Kim peered out the window. “I don’t see any snow.”

“It is five point five degrees.”

“Celsius, I assume? What’s that in Fahrenheit? Like, forty.”

“You are teasing me.”

Kim laughed. “Yes. Oh. We’re in Russia.” She laughed again.

“We are. You are pleased?”

“Yes. Oh. Sneaking into foreign countries in the dark! At no point in my life would I have guessed….”

The road was narrow and uneven. Kim was glad she wasn’t trying to drive this herself. Dang. “So what are we looking for?”

“Ironhide got a questionable reading in the vicinity of a quarry nearby earlier in the week. When the site is active, there is simply no way to get close enough for a follow-up.”

“Do I need to plant those portable sensor rods?”

“No, I will be able to approach closely enough to do it myself.”

Kim peered out at the darkness. “You can see fine.”

“Yes, Kim.”

“Should I ask if the Russian government knows we’re here?”

“They will get an activity report at the end of the month. If we find energon, arrangements will have to be made for extraction. Are you warm enough?”

“Well, yes. I’m _in here_. And I know your hydraulic fluid and lubricant is good to minus twenty or so.”

An amused string of clicks. “Fahrenheit again.”

Kim peered out into the darkness, the shadow of trees, the stars overhead. It couldn’t have been more than five minutes, but in the darkness it seemed longer. The trees disappeared suddenly, even as the dirt road smoothed out. The ground in front gave way to a vague, dark, absence.

“This will be more efficient if I transform.”

Kim gathered up her bag and stepped slipped out into the cold. Her gloves were in her pocket, and she fumbled them on while Prime transformed. It was above freezing—ostensibly. Kim wasn’t at all used to it. At night, Nevada got _uncomfortably chilly_ in October. This was—dear god! Her breath was a pale, foggy little cloud in the darkness.

“I wish to try another angle,” Optimus said. “May I lift you?”

She turned and reached into his scoop. The servo that closed around her seemed generously warm.

He walked along the edge of the pit, huge feet making only a little noise on the soil on the rim. It was dark and cold—dark enough that there were more stars than she could see from the mesa at night, but clouds were coming in, blanking about a third of the sky.

Optimus paused, peered down into the abyss. His hydraulics swished restlessly.

“Is it very deep?” Kim whispered, pulling her hat further down.

“No. Only, perhaps… seventy feet.”

Kim giggled. Even as a joke, imperial measurements were an effort. “Feet.” 

“Nothing,” he said suddenly. “There is no energon here. There is no dark energon here. And yet….” He stepped to the very edge and crouched down.

“Scrap, be careful!” Kim said.

Luminous blue optics flicked to her briefly. “The rim is stable.” _Clicks_ and _shushs_ : a system check. “I wonder if we are catching the energon forming. Interesting, if true. I think we will have to purchase this facility and place sensors so we can observe it.”

“Hm. You’ll need a good story, or the workers will ask questions. Especially since the jobs will be missed.”

“What do you suggest?”

“I’m not sure; my job is to explain you, not keep people from noticing you exist. Maybe Bill would have an idea. Would it be unsafe to keep running the quarry, just with…new management? Your R&D companies has employees, right?”

“And if it suddenly sprouts dark energon? I do not wish to expose humans to that risk.”

“Yeah…as I understand it, _any_ mine or quarry or oil well or canyon or tunnel or rock slide or tectonic fault might suddenly sprout dark energon with no warning.” It was kind of surprising that Kim wasn’t more panicked about that. But energon was _rare_ and most likely in older disturbances rather than ongoing ones. The Autobots surveyed thousands of miles every week, but it was a good month if they found even two deposits, and most of them were small.

“I will take it under consideration. In the mean time, there is nothing to do here just now.” He stepped back from the edge and lowered his bulk to the ground. Probably it was deliberate, that he was blocking the cold draft.

“Are we going home?” Kim felt vaguely disappointed. There wasn’t much to see, but she hadn’t been to Russia before.

“Not just yet, if you agree.”

“No, this is fine. It’s quiet here.” She came in closer. He was down, on his side, facing her. “Hey? Wild planet, huh?”

“Yes. It is. Are you warm enough?”

“Yes.” It was almost automatic, positioning herself close to his face, but not too close for his optics to focus on. “Is this a serious conversation? Or something practical?”

“Practical. To begin with, scheduling. You have not requested time off for the holidays.”

“No, I’m not going to.” He shifted slightly, a protest rising. Kim waved a hand. “First year in a new job, nobody expects to get time off. It won’t seem strange.”

“Perhaps not. But this sacrifice is unnecessary. You should see your family.”

“I’m sure that seems very reasonable to you,” Kim said, shoving her gloved hands into her coat pockets. “But I’m not getting on an airplane now that I know the _Nemesis_ can totally wipe out navigation. And even if my car will start, it’s a three day drive each way. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Kim. Our patrol pattern can be altered to accommodate particular side trips. You could travel by Bridge.”

“Oh. Beloved. It is a very old, narrow street. I can’t take you—I don’t think it would support your weight.”

“Agreed. But I am not your only friend. If I post a request to the calendar— And Bumblebee and Hound have both offered to travel with you for the celebration of gratitude.”

“Oh,” was all she could think to say. “But. No. There’ll be questions about my job. They’ll ask if I’ve made friends. It’s all top secret.”

“And you will tell them so; you are working with the government in a community comprised of refugees and military advisors. Your work is classified currently, but will not always be so.”

“I…guess.”

“NEST members have had to negotiate their secrecy for four years now. It is…a strain. But it can be done.”

Kim took a deep breath of the bracing air. “Wednesday to Friday,” she conceded. “Okay. But not Christmas. I’m staying here for that. No, the babies will want to do all the fun Earth things. Thanksgiving is mostly about food, and they don’t care about that. But decorating the tree and singing the songs and –I think we may have to show them snow.”

“Agreed.”

“Okay.” Kim took another deep breath and then, walking carefully in the dark, moved down toward his thorax. She wasn’t at as good an angle for his optics here, but down here would be the electromagnetic sweet spot; close enough and her tiny human field would overlap his spark. She moved in closer. Another step—

The soft protoform hum that greeted her was the happy sound she was looking for. Kim took off a glove and wiped the pad of her thumb through the condensation forming on his chest plate. “Is it better? When I can come to you rather than you having to lift me in close?”

“It is meaningful, that you choose this closeness with me… and that you act to create it.”

“You usually initiate overlapping,” she said slowly, and waited.

“I am Prime.”

“So your field is unusually large and beautiful, which means I can sometimes almost perceive it.”

“And, generally, it is only those who knew me as Orion who approach me.”

“Should I worry I’m being rude? Or should I worry about you being isolated.”

The cry was quiet and deep and ran through Kim’s teeth into the bones of her jaw. It rose for a moment and then cut off suddenly.

“Oh,” Kim breathed. “You can—You can cry. If it’s time for that. It’s quiet here. And we’re alone.”

“No. Forgive me. I will not grieve for those who are gone, as though the loss of their company is more important than the company that is here.”

“Oh.” Kim’s voice broke. “No. No, that’s— No. You don’t only get to be sad about things alone. That’s. That would be awful.”

But he made no sound, didn’t move.

Kim turned around, dug her heels into the dirt, and leaned her back hard against him.

Still no response. Or—

Kim checked her phone. No glyph messages.

Right. Okay. He might be talking to someone across the planet. Or he might be silent. Or he might be listening—

If he was listening electromagnetically—he must be, she was overlapping, you couldn’t turn that off—then he was—not hearing, no, fields only gave general information, even for other mecha. But he would be perceiving that Kim was agitated.

_I’m worried. And I don’t know what to do. He’s lost his planet, most of his friends, he blames himself for the war, and at some point—sometime soon—he’s going to manipulate Megatron into fighting him—_

Mech overlapped when they were sad or scared or in pain. Distress. Did they do it to keep each other company in distress? Or to offer a comforting counterpoint? Should Kim be listening?

_What would it feel like?_

_What does it feel like?_

Kim leaned harder and breathed. She felt the soft ground beneath her feet. She felt the cold on her face. There was another thing to feel. It wasn’t a thing humans were particularly built to notice. But mecha were built around it. _I’m here with you,_ Kim thought. _All the things that are not here and not now, they don’t matter. All the things I don’t know. All the things I can’t fix._ You _are here, and that is all that matters to me—_

Kim pushed against Optimus as hard as she could. His armor could probably barely registered the pressure.

“Easy, Kim,” he said softly. His servo came around, settled in front of her, not quite touching. “Will you accept counsel?”

“Yes, please.”

“Worry creates turbulence in the flow. Likewise, increasing the flow eases worry.”

Kim felt an unwelcome stab of frustration. “Flow—I don’t have any energon.”

“Electromagnetics also flow.”

Kim frowned. “Mecha can manipulate their fields. Humans aren’t even aware—” She stopped. “The babies. Are they aware of their fields? Can they control—”

“No. That skill cannot be packaged into a file. They must learn this by experience.”

Kim sighed. “But they have the hardware.”

“They have sparks.”

“Right. And I don’t.”

“Your spark is far more diffuse. It is not less loving.”

Kim flushed hot under her jacket.

“Yes. Like that, Kim.”

“Oh,” she breathed. The flush was spreading inward. “You’re doing something.”

“ _We_ are doing something.”

Kim was a little dizzy. She sucked in cold air and reached out with her hand to grasp at his servo.

“Kim. We are not matching frequencies. We cannot. We must not try.”

“No kidding,” she gasped. Her brain was electromagnetic. So was hear heart. “How?” How….what? Kim couldn’t think. Was that because things were going well? Or badly?

“There is a musical conceit in Cybertronic music. It is not seen in human music.”

Kim gulped, nodded to show she was paying attention.

“A chord,” he said. “A low note with many much higher notes floating on top. Remain yourself. Not unison, chord.”

“Chord,” Kim managed in a small voice. “We blend. We are not the same.”

“You are yourself. Beloved as you are. Strong.”

“You’re the low note. I’m floating on top.” She pictured the metaphor, held it in the front of her mind. She hummed a little, experimentally—and then felt a flicker of embarrassment. Instead of the click of amusement she expected, Optimus answered with a bass protomatter tone in the same key.

Kim breathed. The cold air made here eyes water. Or maybe that was something else. She wiped a gloved hand over her face and kept humming. I am myself. We are here.

The warm feeling began to recede. It was too soon—and also she had been doing this too long. She was sagging now, against his hand.

“Kim. Easy. A few steps to your left.” He transformed, coming to rest with the driver’s side door open right beside her. She struggled up the steps and crawled in.

Warm. Quiet.

Kim stripped off her gloves. Her fingertips were warm. And her nose. And her ears. Interesting side-effect of whatever it was they had done. “Are you all right?” she asked.

A long pause. “It seems there is a learning curve for both of us.”

Kim was distantly aware that that statement should have been alarming, but—weirdly—she wasn’t feeling either scared or sad, and it had been so long since she wasn’t haunted by both of those feelings that she became a little confused. Calmly, she picked over words until finding the right ones. “Are you harmed? Or uncomfortable?” she asked.

“Neither. Slightly disoriented. Your existence is … very different.”

Maybe he needed some time. Kim tried to hold off talking by counting slowly. She made it to twenty-five before wondering how base pi math worked. And then she wondered how Chip was doing with math and remembered that it had been days since she’d had a chat with Fixit, and he was a primary informant, and then—without meaning to—asked “Is it an accurate metaphor? To picture you as a lower note? Because spark frequencies are in kilohertz. That’s lots of waves a second.”

“It is not accurate to picture either of our fields as a single frequency. We are both a combination of many magnetic waves. However. I have eleven waveforms that propagate at slower speeds than any of yours.”

“Huh,” Kim said. “And what makes you _you_ is those waves, not the equipment you use for cognition.”

“That is a very human way of looking at it.”

That was true. Although not all humans saw the self that way. So. Maybe it wasn’t. And maybe it didn’t matter. “Would it be okay if I touched the interface.”

“Communication from you is welcome.”

“Touch isn’t a one-way message. Or a data gathering. It is a feedback loop.” She curved her hand around the hula dancer base that was growing out of—rather than stuck to--the dash.

“Then this interface is flawed,” he said. “It sends you no information.”

“No. It’s just a different loop than I’d get holding hands with a human. But you’re you, not a human. And I think we agreed, we are who we are.” She dropped her eyes. “I’m sorry I can’t take you home to meet my family.”

“Kim. Human family is an intimidating thought. I cannot imagine those sorts of ties of biology, or what it would mean to meet someone who had such a claim upon you. And I confess I am relieved I don’t have to demonstrate my goodwill by eating food.”

Kim laughed. “Oh, my god. Really?”

“I’m sorry. My courage fails me. I have tried to imagine….”

“You’re forgiven. And maybe someday, after you’ve had a while to come to terms with—“ But there was only a seven percent chance he would still be alive when the war ended and the Autobots were public. It wasn’t like she was going to have to introduce him to anyone, or explain this relationship, or worry about her uncle saying something embarrassing. Kim’s other hand curled around the hula dancer. “Damn. I’m sorry.”

“I promise you. If proper introductions are ever possible, I will fortify my nerve.”

“How strange,” Kim breathed. “I don’t feel like screaming. I usually do. I mean, all the time….”

“Kim…perhaps, do not take it as certainty I will lose?”

“It’s going to be awful. Even if I don’t hope… It will be awful and never stop being awful.” It seemed strange to say the words out loud, when she never let herself think the end of these sentences.

“Yes,” he said. “Hope takes courage. I suggest it anyway.”

“Okay,” she managed. “Okay. Hey.” And her voice did not break. “You are heavily armed. You are strong and wily. Maybe we’ll be integrating our species for a long time.” _Until I’m old, even. Maybe this can be my life._ Astonishingly, the thought did not make her want to cry.

“Do you wish to go home?” he asked. “Or would you rather see more of the terrain here?”

It was dark. There was not much chance that Kim would see anything. But she snapped in the seatbelt and sat back anyway. “Let’s drive around a while.”

***

Kim must have fallen asleep, because Optimus had to wake her for the check-in call before Bridging back. It was hard, climbing out at the stairs and saying good night. But quartering assignments were determined by size. Optimus couldn’t casually hang out in rooms built for humans.

At the top of the stairs, her steps faltered. One of the couches was occupied. Director Mearing was seated in the middle, head thrown back, asleep. On either side of her, under each arm, were the sparklings. Hot Rod was folded into a ball, and Serenity was tucked up into a lumpy box, and together the three of them were the picture of cuteness. Kim paused for a moment, taking in the utter sweetness of it. Then, tiptoeing, she crept past and into the dorm.

Kim had expected, coming in so late, that everyone would be in bed. The light was on in the kitchen, and when Kim poked her nose in, she found Chip piling milk, honey, cinnamon, and vanilla on the counter. “Oh. Hi.” He waved vaguely. “I’m making –well, not quite steamed cow. Interested?”

“Yes. Thanks,” Kim said. She fetched a pan from the cabinet and laid it beside the ingredients. “Working late?”

“Nope,” he said, popping the ‘p.’ “Just don’t want to sleep.” He poured the milk and added a spoonful of honey. “When you said learning the language gave you nightmares? I assume that wasn’t just a figure of speech.”

“No. It was awful. Worse than the nightmares from Russian.”

“You got nightmares from Russian.”

“Yeah. I mean, just the usual: making Fs, not being able to think of a word, walking into the exam and discovering you studied French instead of Russian. Like that.”

He stirred thoughtfully. “And the dreams from Cybertronix?”

Kim made a face. “Not being able to think of a word. Getting yelled at in binary—weird, don’t ask. Trying to have a conversation, but it’s all arguments, and then something dark and huge eats me.”

“Huh,” he said. He stirred. “Will you get a couple of cups out?”

“Sure,” Kim said. “Don’t tell me you’re having bad dreams! You’re a linguist, you _like_ languages.”

“I like Cybertronix _very_ much. I’m still dreaming about something dark and huge and angry. It hasn’t eaten me yet….”

“That’s….”

“Under the circumstances, a little worrying.”

“That movie,” Kim said. “Where the linguist learns the alien language and….and sees the future…?”

He turned to look at her. “ _Native Tongue_ , where the babies who try to learn the non-human languages explode…?”

“But mine went away,” Kim protested. “About the time we learned we were hiring _you_. It had to be stress. It wasn’t my problem anymore, and I stopped being freaked out.”

“Hmm. And that kid speaks it. And he’s fine.”

Kim opened her mouth. Shut it. “No, we can’t use him as a data point.”

Chip’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

Kim looked at the ceiling. She looked at the lightly steaming milk. She sat down.

The spoon stilled. “Oh. God. What?”

“You don’t work for the military. My guesses are none of their business. You can’t repeat this.”

“We don’t _seriously_ have a weird ‘boy and his robot’ thing going on here, come on!”

Kim bit her lip. “I think he’s got a spark. I think he got stuck with a stray one during the fight over the Allspark. It was throwing off souls everywhere. I think…one landed on Raf and held on. It was an accident. His family was camping not too far away.”

“That doesn’t seem…likely.”

“He didn’t learn Cybertronix. He just…knows it.”

“You are fucking me.”

“God, I wish. I so wish.”

He began to stir frantically. “That can’t happen! How could that happen?”

Kim slumped forward, head buried in her hands. “I don’t know. Have you seen the video with the _vending machine_? Or the cash register? Or the flash light that had huge teeth?”

“We’re talking about a human body.”

“That speaks fluent alien and has a really huge magnetic field.”

He sighed. “Hand me those cups? Thanks. It doesn’t matter anyway. _You_ are my data point, and if Cybertronix did things to human brains, it wouldn’t stop doing it when you stopped feeling responsible.”

“Well. Right. I mean logically—”

“I’ve started dreaming about a big darkness that wants to eat me.” 

“Oh. That’s. Um.”

He set a cup of hot, doctored milk in front of Kim. “Apparently a coincidence.”

“Do you need a break?”

“You’re kidding. No. This… I have to do this. Even if I _was_ going to explode, I would do this.”

“Do you keep a personal journal? So you can track your state of mind?” 

“Maybe I should. So if I descend into madness, there’ll be a record.” He sipped the milk pensively. “Wow. That’s not Lovecraft at all.”

“Yay,” Kim said. “Oh. I think there’s a psychologist over in NEST. You could talk to somebody who knows what’s going on here?”

“Maybe. I can’t imagine my issues are like the ones that Ranger team faces.”

Kim thought about Decepticon strafing runs. “Damn. Okay. On the other hand, your arrival here wasn’t exactly civilian. I mean, if you wanted to--”

“I’ll think about it.” He sat down and leaned his arms against the table. “In the meantime, what is this weirdness where nouns have aspect?”

“Oh. I hate that.”


	2. Anaphora

On Sunday, Kim had planned to sleep late before re-dying her hair and then taking the sparklings to the little greenhouse tucked behind the NEST offices. On the way to the bathroom—very early—though, she heard enthusiastic activity in the kitchen. Should she check?

Surely. But it would be much better go back to bed.

Grumpily, Kim poked her head into the kitchen. Fixit was wielding a bowl and whisk with vigorous enthusiasm. The kitchen smelled….good. There was fruit spread out on the counter. “So,” Kim said. “Hey.”

“Hey, Kim,” Fixit answered politely.

Kim looked around. No, no other humans in the corners. “So…whatcha doin’?” Kim asked worriedly.

“I am cooking.”

“Uh, yeah,” Kim agreed. “I can see that. Um. You don’t eat, though.”

“No. I am making breakfast for my friends.”

“Oh. That’s…very nice.” Kim blinked the last of the sleepiness away. So many questions were rushing in. She picked one: “Why? I mean…what made you think of this.”

“I have been watching cooking shows,” Fixit said brightly. “The instructors all seemed to enjoy this activity. I wished to try it.”

“Right. Yeah. So you’re following a recipe.” That was somewhat reassuring. “What are you making?”

“Banana bread is in the oven. I am preparing a frittata. I will form a fruit salad while it cooks.”

Kim peered into his bowl of beaten eggs. It looked normal enough. “Who did your shopping for you? Maggie?”

“Sergeant Epps made the purchases from my list. The local grocery store does not offer delivery.”

“Uh. Huh. Right.”

“I am going to surprise Maggie,” he said proudly.

“I imagine she will be very surprised,” Kim agreed. “This is very nice of you. It is polite, when someone is cooking, to offer to help?”

He nodded. “I will refuse help, if that is permitted. I wish to do this myself.”

“Understandable,” Kim lied, pushing down her disquiet. Dear God. Mecha cooking. Mecha cooking and expecting humans to eat the result. “What about setting the table? Can I offer to do that?”

“Thank you,” he said graciously.

Slowly, Kim fetched a sponge and wiped the table. She was desperately trying to think. Fixit put his eggs into a pan and set them in the oven. “So…which cooking shows?”

“Martha Stewart. Julia Child. Alton Brown. The glorious Giada. I watched forty hours of the Pioneer Woman, but she makes meatballs while wearing hand ornamentation. Worst Cooks in America was depressing. I quite enjoy Epicurious on youtube.”

“Oh,” Kim whispered. “Huh.” She went to the plate cupboard. Fixit had done the furnishing, and he hadn’t been able to choose a single plate pattern, so he’d ordered one setting of every kind he liked best. “So, how many?”

“All five human residents, plus Bobby and Dr. No.”

“Oh,” Kim squeaked. If he had made a mistake, he would poison them all at once. “We don’t have enough chairs. I’ll go get a couple more.” _He’s a super genius. He’s watched Maggie eat for four years. Banana bread, frittatas—what even is a frittata? Spanish oven-omelet? Italian oven-omelet? Fruit salad. It’s not Bridge calculations. It’s mixing things in a bowl._

Kim was nearly hyperventilating as she hauled in the chair from her room. There was no way to refuse to eat Fixit’s food.

Her hand, when she knocked on Carly’s door, shook. “It’s Sunday,” Carly protested, still adjusting her bathrobe. “Ratchet gave us off until this afternoon.”

“Yes!” Kim said brightly. “Fixit is making us all breakfast. I need to borrow another chair.”

Carly blinked. “Whosa whatnow?”

Kim nodded vigorously. Her smile was too wide.

“But. We don’t eat energon.”

“No. He’s cooking.”

“Food?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. Well. He…needed a hobby.” She blinked again, more slowly this time. “He has no idea what anything is supposed to taste like. Of course, I’m sure he’s following the recipe exactly. Oh. Dear. He isn’t beating eggs together or anything? He knows how measuring cups work?”

“What? Oh! No, he’s been watching cooking shows. And I assume he’s using metric.” Did you still call them ‘measuring cups’ when you weren’t using ‘cup’ as a unit?

“Okay. I guess I better get dressed. I’ll bring a chair.” Carly shut the door firmly.

Dressed was a good idea. Kim went and changed before returning to the kitchen to finish laying out the plates and silverware.

Fixit, at a speed that made his servos literally blur, was chopping apples. “Apparently, this middle part is not eaten,” he said in a bemused tone. “It seems quite pretty.”

“Too hard to chew and digest,” Kim said, swallowing hard. “Also, the seeds contain small amounts of cyanide.”

Fixit froze. “That substance is highly dangerous to humans.”

“Yes. So we don’t eat that part.”

“This activity is much more complex than energon refinement….” he said uncertainly

“Really? Because we can’t figure out how you do that.”

“Energon is one substance. There are literally thousands of food substances….” He looked down at the apple slices—each one even and identical.

“Well. Think about how much of Earth’s economy is taken up with it: growing it, processing it, transporting it, storing it, distributing it, preparing it…. It’s very complicated.”

He considered her with his broad optics. “You are concerned about my cooking ability.”

Kim managed a shrug. “The first time someone cooks something, it often turns out badly. Concern—I wouldn’t say concerned.” She smiled fearlessly. “Those apple slices look impressive. I can’t cut that tidily.”

Bobby and Dr. Nomura bustled in with orange juice and champagne, determined to make a proper brunch of it. They had gotten advance warning—which made sense, since Fixit had needed a human for the shopping. Kim, if she had known, would have supervised this very carefully. Now, there was nothing left to do but eat.

Maggie, of course, was completely charmed by the fancy breakfast. She exclaimed at the presentation and how lovely the banana bread smelled. She admired the fruit salad and even the plates.

The table was a tight fit for seven seated around it. Kim, wedged between Bobby Epps and Pierre, kept smiling.

The frittata tasted a little like a naked quiche. Kim had no idea if it was good, but it wasn’t horrible. She was on firmer ground with the banana bread and fruit salad, at least. They seemed perfectly normal. Kim ate, bite after bite, smiling. She’d often lamented that she couldn’t share food customs in this field site. Well. Here was the chance.

In the end, Kim couldn’t tell by the taste of the food that it had been made by someone from another planet. She was so distracted by the question, though, that she could never remember, afterwards, what anyone had talked about.

When it was over, Kim was a little giddy with relief. She gave Fixit a happy hug: he could do anything. Seventeen dimensional math? Piece of cake. Banana bread? Also cake. (She managed not to laugh at the internal pun.)

She was helping clean up when the sparklings knocked on the outer door. They had had to close the door before they could knock on it, but they were currently very earnest about human manners.

***

It was the sparklings’ favorite place, the little experimental conservatory in Human territory. It had plants—in pots, in racks, on shelves--all packed in tightly under grow lights. The original experiment had ended a couple of years before, but the minicons had been keeping it up.

Since Ratchet himself couldn’t supervise the visits (he was too large to get into the human office spaces), both a human and minicon were required. Today it was Kim and Jetstorm who waited with overt patience while Ratchet explained—again—that the sparklings must cooperate with people who were trying to help them and that if they misbehaved in any way, they would be grounded for as many orns as they had already been alive.

Kim thought the threatened punishment was harsh, but was relieved he had phrased it as ‘cooperation’ rather than ‘obedience.’ Each of the mech children was as large and powerful as a motorcycle or baby elephant; uncooperative, they could accidently cause huge property damage or badly hurt a human, even if they were technically ‘obedient.’

The trip through the back tunnel was an adventure itself. The babies continually found new things to look at, new dark cracks in the walls to poke tactile or chemical sensors into. Hot Rod had been fascinated with Serenity’s entry into the world and modified his two forelimbs with more flexible ‘fingers’ for climbing. Where the walls were sloppily carved out of the rock, he tried all the handholds, sometimes creeping up to the ceiling before leaping down and holding out his servos for high fives.

The crude tunnel exited on a narrow, dim, short corridor with old 1950s tile on the floor. That disgorged into a much wider corridor with bright, white tile and lots of doors. The kids poked at doorknobs and tapped the walls. It wasn’t, at any stage, a fast journey.

There were vending machines and a table at the next hallway junction, and Lennox, Ford, and Fowler were clustered in conversation. Hot Rod saw them and dove forward. “Hello! We are going to see the plant habitat. Today has a name. It is Sunday.”

Ford flinched and stepped backward, but Fowler reached out to pat the little bot on the helm. “Hey there, Roddy. I like the plant habitat, too. Kim. Jetstorm.” He nodded affably.

Serenity went more slowly, looking around, tactile sensor running along the wall. Will Lennox was waiting for her with his hands in his pockets. Now he took out two matchbox cars, a yellow Volkswagen and blue racecar. “Presents,” he said. They approximated Bumblebee and Mirage, but not so perfectly that Kim was sure the kids would make the connection.

They held out their hands: Serenity’s human-looking fingers and Hot Rot’s multi-directionally jointed claws. Lennox carefully handed over the toys. “Thank you,” they chorused dutifully.

“You usually have weekends off,” Kim said. Ford was junior enough to be working weekends, and Fowler’s schedule was weird, but Lennox had been a nine-to-five guy lately.

“Sarah took the kids to visit her aunt. In a couple years Annabelle will be in school, and they won’t be able to travel whenever they want.”

“Do—"

Serenity popped up between them, holding out the toy Volkswagen. “What is it?”

“It’s a toy,” Lennox explained with a small smile. “You play with it.”

Hot Rod had already flipped it over and spun the little wheels, but Serenity lifted it to her optics and tapped it with a chemosensing finger. “How?”

“It’s a toy car,” Lennox said, frowning slightly. “You roll it.”

“Like…a tiny alt form?” she asked.

Lennox’s brows rose slightly, and Fowler had his teeth gritted over a laugh.

“It’s a tiny alt form,” Lennox agreed after a moment. “But it doesn’t have a root form. Just an alt. Just wheeled travel.”

“Why do humans make toy alt forms? They don’t transform.”

Lennox blinked. “Um. Well. Humans don’t have alt forms, Seri. But they build cars to travel in. And we think cars are great, so we make toys for kids to play with.”

Fowler had his face turned to the wall now, and was turning red.

“You know what that is, sweetie,” Kim said. “I know you kids have toy cars. This is like the others.”

“We don’t have any of these,” Serenity said.

“I hid them,” Hot Rod said cheerfully. “I did not want to share.”

Lennox frowned at once. “Oh, now,” he said sternly, “Hot Rod. Was that nice?”

“It was not nice!” Serenity shouted in outrage. “It was absolutely not nice!”

Kim glanced at Jetstorm. His vocalizer seemed to have jammed and was putting out a buzzing noise that clearly was not a word.

“All right,” Kim said. “Let’s talk about this.”

Seriously, Lennox said, “Autobots share…don’t they, Kim?”

“Well, that’s the way it seemed.” She glanced pointedly at Hot Rod. “Obviously, they seem able to not-share if they choose.”

“That’s very disappointing. I’m sad to discover that.” Lennox hung his head.

Abruptly, Fowler spun on his heel and retreated down the hall. To someone who did not know better, he might be leaving in disgust or heartbreak, rather than just trying not to be caught laughing hysterically.

“Hot Rod, are you sure you’ve thought about this? If you don’t share toys, Serenity may also choose not to share. The two of you might have two piles of unshared toys and no one to play with.”

Hot Rod made a credible shrug. “I can play with you.”

With a shriek, Serenity’s thin hand shot out and snatched Hot Rod’s toy car. “I won’t share either!”

“Hey! Seri! You give that back!” It took a second to get his limbs unlocked and coordinated, but when he did, he dove for Serenity.

She kicked him.

Jetstorm lifted Kim and Lennox by their clothing and hauled them out of the way. He was yelling in Cybertronix. Ford was plastered against the wall, gasping, eyes wide with horror. Hot Rod was scrambling, trying to snatch the toy car.

Kim lost her balance for a moment as Jetstorm let go. Bracing against the wall, she hissed, “Stop it right now or I’m telling—everyone.”

The sparklings froze. Serenity was sort of bent into a pretzel, arms stretched out to the side and lower appendages cinched around Hot Rod’s torso to hold his main mass still. Hot Rod’s sensor stalks were waving wildly, looking (Kim assumed) for a leverage point.

Lennox brushed himself off and stepped forward. “If you are going to fight over presents, you don’t need to have them.” He held out his hands. “Give them to me, please, Serenity.”

Slowly, she released her grip on her brother, sorted out her limbs, and held out the two toy cars.

“It’s not fair,” Hot Rod said. “Seri took mine.” 

“You! You are a….cheat!” she snapped back. “I—” She froze. Her optics reset.

Hot Rod shivered. All his sensor cables pulled in.

Kim glanced around. “What’s wrong?”

Jetstorm looked a bit sheepish, too. His armor seams were locked very tight. “Prime wants to talk to them. Now.”

“This is your fault,” Hot Rod said darkly to his sister. 

***

Optimus was waiting for them in the ‘Bot commissary. There was no one else there. Jetstorm came out of the passageway first—he transformed into a sphere and rolled away at speed. Hot Rod and Serenity hesitated in the entryway.

Kim had had more than ten minutes to think about what to do when they reached ‘Bot country. How were mech children disciplined? Were they? Was that even a thing?

Would the kids get yelled at? Or have behavioral guidelines reloaded?

Was this melt-down developmentally normal? Or had hanging out with humans made them greedy and argumentative?

Kim glanced at the sparklings and walked forward to stop in front of Optimus. She knelt and then folded herself forward, an approximation of a box. “I’m not sure of the apology procedures,” she said. “The sparklings were entrusted to me. I could not get them to behave kindly and show generosity. I am very sorry.” She didn’t have to speak loudly. The sparklings had excellent hearing.

“In any complex undertaking, errors are to be expected. I’m sure you did your best. Hot Rod and Serenity lack experience and perspective. Perhaps they were not yet capable of better behavior.”

There was a long pause. Kim didn’t sneak a look.

Optimus said softly, “Unfold yourself, if you would. I would like to consult.”

When she was standing, he crouched down. “I understand human sparklings engage in…similar bad behavior.”

“Oh, yes. But—I can’t think it’s alike. Human babies don’t know how to act. We can’t download behavior protocols. And their brains aren’t finished yet. The cognitive hardware. It can’t be the same for…we weren’t sure what to do. The way humans learn things….”

“Indeed. Both sparklings have fully functional processors and can define what it means to ‘share’ and ‘cooperate.’ And yet.” He sighed. “Come here.”

Hot Rod was on five feet. He scampered forward like a nervous puppy. Serenity stayed erect, but scooted forward without seeming to lift her feet at all.

“You’ve caused each other great distress,” Optimus said to them. “And yourselves. I feel certain if Hot Rod had had opportunity to consider the implications of cooperation and the relative value of objects and good relations, he would have been less…acquisitive.”

Hot Rod quivered.

Optimus continued, “Like humans, when mecha are angry, we don’t think clearly. Serenity… Oh, Serenity. It was not a genuine betrayal. It was a mistake made from ignorance. You and Hot Rod could have come to an agreement that wouldn’t have ended in your presents being taken away.”

They both began to cry. Their protomass was too small to make the sound that resonated in the teeth. Their weeping was a high-pitched, quiet twitter. Optimus hummed softly, a resonant counterpoint. They crept toward him, and he leaned down for overlapping.

Ratchet and Blurr arrived finally, to carry the children off for a stasis and file management. Optimus stayed still, watching them go. When they were alone, he turned to Kim. “Were you worried I would be harsh with them?” he asked.

“I was worried about everything. This parenthood thing…. I wasn’t actually sure you wouldn’t cave. They’ve always been treated with kindness and respect. I don’t know where they learned this.”

“Interacting with other…beings is difficult. There are things they can only learn from experience. And they will make many more mistakes.”

“I was kind of hoping, if I took the blame, they would figure out what they were supposed to apologize for. Or that maybe they needed an example of apologizing.” She shook her head. “I really am sorry. It was just a trip to the greenhouse.”

“This will not be the last time the quarrel with each other.”

“Nobody mentioned the creches being a hotbed of conflict.” But if interviews got you the whole picture, you’d never need participant observation.

“It is different when they are many, when they have many identical toys, when they are not given such intense, individual attention. It is a different life here.” He sighed. “And we have no direct experience with sparklings so young. That is why we are moving forward today.”

Kim nodded. “Everything on schedule for Sundoor?”

“Yes.” He paused. “Major Lennox has requested he be allowed to observe today’s procedure.”

“Oh. I wondered why he was on base on a Sunday.”

Kim was standing directly next to his ped. It came up past her hip and was complex and delicate for all its size. Fifty moving parts? One hundred? Every step was graceful and perfect. 

Kim reached up and patted him on the solidly armored ‘shin.’ She sighed. “So, there’s something I think I need to mention. It’s going to be hard to hear.” 

“All right,” he said, leaning his helm further down. “I am listening.” 

“It’s good that you use what you’ve learned from your own experience to...to teach them. It’s really good.” 

“But I have made a mistake.” 

“It’s not a mistake. It’s just. Watch out for projecting your own feelings onto what they do.” It was hard getting the words out. She didn’t want to say this to him. But she couldn’t just pretend it wasn’t happening. What if it got worse? 

“And I have done so?”

“Serenity will forgive him. She will learn how to work together with other people to create a….situation...everyone can accept. She isn’t Megatron.” 

“Ah.” he said.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “If saying that is driving on a closed road, I’m sorry. But when you deal with the children, you have to deal with where they are, not where you are afraid they are.” 

“You are correct. I was unaware of this hazard. Serenity’s anger….unsettles me. At what is she angry? She has never seen cruelty. She has never been misused.” 

“Well, for a start, she’s angry at her own limitations. She doesn’t know everything yet. She can’t do everything yet.”

“I cannot fix that for her!”

Kim patted his shin again, decided that was not nearly enough, and leaned over for a very awkward and unyielding hug. “Sympathy glyph,” she said. “The one that looks like a face with a very long nose.” 

“Hm.” It wasn’t vocal, but a tense vibration in protomatter. “You draw these conclusions very quickly, using minimal data. It is unsettling. Can you explain your path of reason?”

Kim grimaced. “Maybe intuition?” Which was a sort of magic, as far as mech were concerned. “Or maybe--we have a lot of processing power optimized for _deducing_ the emotional states of others, since we can’t just observe their sparks the way you do.”

“I am grateful I am not a human.” 

Kim chuckled. “For so many reasons, no doubt.” 

“If I were human, parenthood would be a decentralized, individual project. The thought of managing them alone… Older sparklings, yes. We… mentor and apprentice them, place them with work groups or individuals for further development. I have worked with many. But this age-- I do not know how your species manages.”

“Our failures are spectacular and many. How-some-ever, if I ever do it, I’ll do it here and draft you all to help. Turnabout is fair play.” It was not a thought Kim had had before, but now, hearing it, it was a fantastic idea. 

“Do you plan to?” he asked softly. “Parenthood?”

“Oh,” Kim said. “I don’t know. I think….that is something I’ll decide _after._ ” 

He did not have to ask _after what_? The silence hovered between them for a moment. “I assume you wish to change the subject?” he asked softly.

“Yes. Please.” 

“How are preparations for the open house coming?” 

“Oh. Perfect. Yes. Bulkhead has finally settled on a design for the railing of the assembly room shelf and the raw materials for the spiral staircase has arrived. Fixit and Brawn are all set to re-etch and re-seal the floor Wednesday night so it will look fabulous Thursday. Mirage has decided to build a karaoke machine from scratch rather than move the one in the DFAC. He assures me it’s going...fine.” 

“So. Nothing to worry about.” 

“Everything to worry about, but… we’ll be ready.”

“Do you need lunch before this afternoon?” 

“I had a big breakfast. Fixit has taken up cooking.” 

“How...interesting.” 

“You have no idea. Eating food made by someone who _doesn’t eat_. Fortunately, he’s ridiculously competent. Imagine me trying to refine energon. Much worse.”

“Terrifying,” he agreed. 

~~

Kim was on the shelf. She was settled in with a bottle of water and a notebook, though there might not be much to take notes on. Most of the action would be invisible.

Sundoor, the flipsides, had been shifted to the central position and was now hooked to the main monitor station. She was small—human sized and lightly armored. She was still—exactly as she had been for well over a month now. There was no cognitive activity. Repair subsystems were dormant. Spark activity was minimal.

Optimus was pacing and, Kim assumed, in conversation with Ratchet, although neither said anything aloud. Watching them prepare, Kim didn’t notice Major Lennox until he called a greeting from the yellow line and asked if he could take a seat on the shelf.

Ratchet scowled and hesitated, then waved him forward with a “Fine, whatever. Don’t touch anything.”

Kim motioned him toward the stack of folding chairs, but avoided eye contact. Of course the Army didn’t trust this. Of course, he stopped by just to make sure things went forward as planned. Of course.

He muttered a thanks for the chair and unfolded it.

Optimus popped out an interface line and jacked into a medical port. Ratchet, in turn, connected a line to him. “I’ve never seen _that_ ,” Lennox muttered.

“Optimus is very, very good with files and memory, but they won’t take chances that she’s boobytrapped or something.” She motioned for him to hush. “It’s going to be boring; there’s nothing going on that we can see. So just sit there quietly.” 

His brows went up slightly, but he sat. Quietly.

Kim watched the monitors. They would have to bring up power to memory, even while cognition stayed dormant. Spark activity started to rise.

Kim rolled her shoulders and stretched her neck. Optimus and Ratchet were as motionless as their patient. There was nothing to write notes about; Kim’s hands were awkwardly still. There wasn’t even something to take a picture of.

Power levels rose. Reports from repair systems began to scroll across a monitor. Kim shifted in the folding chair, then tried to set a good example by holding still and looking patient.

The spark was more active now. Since his students weren’t watching, Ratchet hadn’t bothered to split the image into frequencies and layers. Kim couldn’t have made meaning out of the details anyway—

Sundoor’s hand suddenly shot out and grabbed all the medical lines, ripping them out with a swift yank. Optimus staggered backward, tripped over Ratchet, fell. They both went down.

Sundoor was up. She stood in the middle of the infirmary, scanners popping out, antennae hyperextended. Her optics settled on the shelf. She took a step forward, exclaimed in Cybertronix, jerked backward.

Ratchet was climbing out from under Optimus. Kim could hear his capacitors charging; they were as loud as Bulkhead’s or Ironhide’s.

Sundoor stumbled into one of Ratchet’s rolling tables, spilling a rain of unsorted scrap metal. She jumped up. She turned. She transformed into a—three-wheeled egg?—and zipped away down the tunnel toward the bridge.

Kim gasped, realized she had forgotten to breathe, looked toward Lennox—

He was sliding down the ladder rail, was nearly at the floor already—

Ratchet was up, finally. His voice in Cybertronix was coming out of all the speakers and Kim’s phone. 

Kim scrambled along the edge of the shelf. “Optimus?” Shit, shit, shit. Oh, god. “Optimus.”

He was rising slowly.

Kim looked around. There was no one else. Shit, shit.

“Optimus. Request status report.” She was shouting, and it echoed back from the stone.

He was up. His optical lenses were slack and unfocused. “Kim.” Flat, mechanical, barely English.

“Op-Optimus. There is a Decepticon on the base. If you can’t fight, you have to run.” Oh, shit. The children. They were in the human dorm, still napping with Fixit. “I’ll get the kids. You can get them away—”

“She is not a Decepticon. I disabled— _Slag the orbital watchtower_!” He skipped over the medical berth and reached out toward the shelf. “I may need you. I’m sorry.”

Kim reached back, relaxed into the servos that closed around her. “If she’s not—Why—?”

Optimus, slowly but smoothly, was headed toward the tunnel. “She awoke during brain surgery with her time, radio, and memory systems disabled on a strange planet among aliens.”

“Not a Decepticon, _still_ dangerous.” That was bitterly unfair.

“It is worse than you think. You must remain calm.”

They rounded the curve, revealing the Ground Bridge bay. The workstation was completely dark, whatever humans on duty evacuated.

There was a human in the corridor, though. The gracile, pink form of Sundoor was wrapped around Chip, chair and all. Her weapons were out, and one was pointed at her hostage while the other was pointed at Bumblebee. “Oh, fuck,” Kim whispered. Bee had been scheduled to take him shopping in Minneapolis today.

Ratchet and Lennox had their weapons pointed meekly upward. Everyone was still.

Well, the mecha were still. Chip was counting in Cybertronix. He counted to sixteen twice as Optimus slowly approached. He had to skip the numbers three and seven because those included sounds he couldn’t even approximate.

Optimus slowly crouched and bent, setting Kim on the floor behind him. The only warning that the Matrix was manifesting was the prickle of static electricity in her hair and then the relic was floating in the air above his head, spinning slowly and glowing with a sharp, blue light.

Oh. We’re doing that, then.

In Cybertronix, Optimus introduced himself and ordered Sundoor to stand down.

Her answer took a couple of seconds for Kim to parse. “ _What is this thing? Why does it talk_?”

His answer included the words for _human_ , _sentient_ , _planet_ , and _stop_. The Matrix was still turning slowly above him.

Chip resonant-clicked a no and added a whistle-ping-rising pitch of request. It was a form used between intimates for a personal request, not the one for strangers in different power positions, but it was probably the only one he could actually give voice to.

Very slowly, Sundoor uncoiled herself from around Chip. She set her feet on the ground. She put away the tiny cannon she had pointed at Bumblebee, but kept one very long-fingered hand on Chip’s shoulder.

Optimus was talking again, long phrases with glissando modifiers Kim didn’t recognize but which were probably in a category of formality limited to primes speaking officially. Interestingly, Bee and Ratchet actually boxed themselves. Kim was guessing they were showing how non-threatening they were until Sundoor abruptly let go and folded into a cube about the size of an expensive ottoman.

The Matrix put itself away, leaving Kim blinking in the grey dimness of the tunnel back-up lights and the shut-down Bridge alcove. Ratchet unfolded back into root form, went to Sundoor, and attached a medical line.

Lennox spun on Optimus. “Did she get a message out? Do we evacuate?”

“The alternate personality is not active. I seized an opportunity to disable that pathway, but doing so triggered a…failsafe that woke her.”

“Oh. Great. So, you just turned lose a confused commando. In my base.”

Optimus dropped politely to one knee. “I am aware that I am about to receive a number of strongly worded emails,” he said.

Kim spared them a worried look and hurried over to Chip, who had not moved. “So. Still want to go shopping? I think it only takes fifteen minutes to reboot the Bridge.”

“No. I think I’m good for today. Let’s um…let’s go to the dorm. Um. Did I hear right? She’s not—”

“She’s not. And she doesn’t know, I think. I’m not sure she has access to any event memory--at all--actually. They weren’t finished.”

“She thought I was an…invader,” he said starting forward. “She demanded an escape.”

“Oh, what a mess. Poor thing. Both of you.”

“Yeah. No. I can’t imagine waking up on an alien planet with no idea how I got there.”

They said nothing else on the way back to the dorm. Once inside the small, comfortable human space, he made straight for the kitchen. “Sugar, right? And fluid?”

“Yeah. Good idea. Are you warm enough? Shock might be a thing.”

He scowled. “Not bleeding.” The emergency root beers were at the back of the fridge. Everyone was trying to avoid carbonated, but sometimes—it was unanimously agreed—an emergency soda was necessary. “So. I guess this is normal, right? Being chased by aliens or whatever?”

“Well…I can’t say I’ve ever been chased. Maggie had to hide from Megatron once. In Utah, back in the day, you know. And the NEST guys—actually, they do most of the chasing.”

“Oh. So I’m lucky then. What about being held hostage? Normal day at work?”

“I think that’s just you.”

“Wow. Great. Yay.” He slammed the root beer back, shut the fridge door, retreated to the sink and stood up to wash his face.

“Once, I was—well, I’m not sure what you call it when you hide under a camo field while Decepticons launch missiles.”

“Oh. Fun. I have that to look forward to? What did you do after?”

“After? We drove, like, a dozen hours back to base because the Bridge was out.”

“Huh.”

Kim shrugged helplessly.

“What should I do? After?”

“Well. Nap. I guess. I mean, if you want to _go_ somewhere, they’ll get the Bridge open again—”

His phone made an unusual noise. He took it out and looked. “Well. Your boss has scheduled three meetings with me. All tomorrow.”

“Pick the one you want and accept. The others will disappear.”

“Oh. Thanks. So? What do you think he wants?”

“I’m guessing it will be a formal apology. He might offer a combat bonus.”

“So it’s not the fightclub talk?”

Kim blinked. “Um what?”

“The first rule of floating cage of blue light is that nobody talks about the floating cage of blue light?”

“Oh. That was just the Matrix.”

“The thing that makes the babies?” he squeaked.

“Well, yes.” Humans did not facilitate hostage negotiations by waving around reproductive organs of any sort, and she felt a painful laugh bubbling up. “But, wee, there is only one of it, and…it can’t be a fake. I mean, they all recognize it. It is proof of identification.”

“So it was the Pope showing the ring, and she had to…obey.”

“Not the ring. The…Chair of Peter. Assuming that was an actual piece of furniture and it… “ _made babies and was a reliquary of the dead and you carried it inside the body instead of sitting on it._ It was too crazy to say out loud. 

“Kim, it was weird.”

“Yeah.” She filled the kettle from the water filter. Time to make tea.

“Is it…alive?”

“That’s a good question. By the standards of biological life, no. It’s just a really big database that generates magnetic wave forms and propagates them out to…be sparks.”

His voice dropped. “Is it sentient?”

That was the right question. Or, anyway, part of the right question. When a Prime’s spark merged with the others in the Matrix, did it remain aware? A person? Would Optimus remember living in the world?

“Kim?”

“Probably. As I understand it. Yeah.” Chip was looking at her, searching for something. Kim dragged herself back. The horrible future could look after itself. This was the linguist she had brought here. She was responsible. “Did it look at you?”

His breath came out in a rush. “Oh, scrap. Yes. Yes it did. I thought I was crazy, just slipping off the edge. It looked at me and it was _huge_ —”

Kim laughed uneasily. “Nope. Not crazy. It’s really….”

“Can it … talk?”

“I dreamed it did, once. Like, a weird crowd of people talking. But I think I was asleep, so maybe not.”

“It wasn’t…I didn’t _hear_ anything. But it’s like there was an argument.”

“Ask Optimus about it. I guess.”

“Have you?”

“Actually…no.”

“Because while it’s happening it seems really important, right? But now it’s starting to seem…silly.”

“Yeah. Huh.” How problematic was that?

Pensive, Kim made tea. She stared it while it steeped. She poured two cups.

“I think I want to go to church next week,” Chip said suddenly. “The nearest one that works for me is in Vegas. Do you think someone would take me?”

“Yeah. It’s just a matter of playing with the schedule, and a week is plenty of time. Huh. Do you specifically want to go to the one in Las Vegas?”

“Well, it’s closest.”

“We have a Ground Bridge. You could attend church anywhere in the world. The actual Vatican? The National Cathedral in Washington? Westminster Abby? The Blue Mosque? Hagia Sophia? You could go anywhere.”

“I don’t think they hold services in Hagia Sophia.”

“St. Basils, though. You can go anywhere. If you were willing to wear a camera in and answer questions afterward, I can think of three or four mecha who would line up for the chance to take you.”

“Oh. That’s a thought. I wouldn’t have to go by myself. Exactly.”

“Las Vegas is fine, though. If that’s what you want.”

“Huh. Thanks.”

***

Kim waited up.

She would rather not have noticed that, but it was obvious, and there was no point in lying to herself. Sitting alone on the steps as nine turned to ten turned to eleven with water and a cheese-and-nut snack and a book was waiting up.

The rumble of his torque engine echoed out of the tunnel at eleven-seventeen. Kim put away the book.

He transformed as he entered the assembly area and—with an amazing display of grace, given his height and tonnage—sat on the floor before the stairs.

“Good night does not work as a greeting. Despite the fact that it is long past evening.”

“Big irony,” Kim agreed.

“How is Dr. Chase?”

“How good is the NEST psychologist?”

“The best. Do I need to make an appointment?”

“Not _for_ him. There’s no rush. Debriefing immediately after the event…turns out that isn’t what helps. And he’s taking it pretty well. Well. This is twice now. Be really nice to him. Um. Reassure him the Matrix isn’t doing anything awful when it looks at us.”

“The Matrix…looks at you?” he repeated slowly.

“At humans. Yeah.”

“And you are aware of this…looking?”

“Well—that might be the problem. It’s only a…sort of weird feeling. You know?”

“I do not.” All the little scanners and special-spectrum cameras that were usually recessed in his helm had popped out.

“We’re barely aware of electromagnetic stuff. Even when it’s really strong. What’s very obvious to you is kind of… I dunno. Not clear to us at all.”

“I see. Has it communicated with you?”

Kim really wasn’t being clear here. “We can’t tell.” And then, more firmly. “It’s very alien. It may be nothing. It may be…scared of us. Or something. Or just curious. It seems like it is doing something—” abruptly, Kim ran out of things to say.

“I will consider the situation carefully,” he said.

Kim nodded.

Slowly, the little sensors withdrew again. Kim asked, “Are you okay?”

“Yes. I’m sure you’re right—Neither of our species has enough experience enough to understand everything clearly. Yet.”

Kim had had three years of practice and training (field work included) to learn to listen without a flicker of any emotion but interest. She didn’t frown now. “I was actually thinking of today’s procedure.”

He frowned now, and it was as much an artifice as Kim’s neutrality. “I admit, it isn’t my favorite activity, explaining my mistakes to our allies. Mr. Keller was particularly articulate in his disappointment.”

Kim did wince now, letting herself go soft. “Ick. Yeah, I can see where that would suck. You weren’t hurt, though? Hound mentioned sometimes a flipsides has nasty boobytraps, in case people go…poking?”

“Ah. There were traps, yes. I dismantled them before they could be triggered.”

“It’s all right, then? Only—” Kim bit her lip.

“Kim, the traps were propagating lines of code. If I had not undone them, and if they had gotten past my firewalls, the target would have been the power supply to my spark chamber.”

Kim swallowed. “So, you’re fine if you’re not dead.”

“My mistake was seizing the opportunity to sever the reset passageways before isolating them from the current consciousness. And yes, it was my mistake. And yes, I am very fortunate neither I nor any of the nearby humans suffered injury for that.”

“I’m not critiquing you. You’re all trying to do brain surgery under the worst conditions. And not even trying to fix something that broke accidently, but something done on purpose to be difficult and horrible. Of course it’s hard and dangerous.” Kim shook her head. “You don’t have to try to save her. _Any_ part of her. A casualty of war, another after millions. But you’re trying, even though it’s dangerous—” She stopped. She breathed. This wasn’t work now. This was as much about the truths she knew as the truths she was listening for: “It is right to do it. It is hard to do. I understand all that, but what I care about is you—”

“And you saw me fall, and you cannot scan me, cannot observe the state of my spark, don’t understand what the dangers are.” He sighed. “And your perspective…it seems a great danger to you.”

“I see. I’m being silly.”

“You are doing your best to be a loyal and compassionate friend. But this is not ‘brain surgery.’ Processors and crystal memory array are not….”

“Oh. _My_ brain is an untidy, analog puddle of pudding. Your brain is modular, with all the parts labeled.” _My brain is safely in my head, with no ports that would allow someone else to put a virus in._

But, of course, if her brain was damaged or wore out, the parts couldn’t be neatly replaced. And then there were prions. And mental illness. _I’m as vulnerable as they are. Just in different ways._

“Your brain is a miracle. That we can even have this conversation….”

“This really hard conversation I think I’m getting wrong.” She cleared her throat. “It’s all hard and complicated and—” It didn’t seem this hard and complicated to anyone else. Maggie, for example. She had just moved in with her best friend and—boom—he’s cooking breakfast, and everything’s great. Oh. And never mind whatever was—smoothly, calmly—going on with Carly, Ironhide _and_ Bobby. Those humans were managing each other and some kind of sexual intimacy in addition to their epic devotion to an alien older than the domestication of cats.

But for Kim, it was complicated. And hard. And it hurt.

“Yes,” Optimus said. “It is hard. Our situation is complicated.”

“I don’t even know what kind of misunderstanding we’re having right now.” And that sounded like a complaint. But what was there to complain about? The ignorance they were already trying as hard as they could to fix?

“I have asked a great deal of you,” he said softly. “Repeatedly. And each time I ask, I wonder: will she reverse on this? Will she raise a firewall? Will she explain to me—so patiently and clearly—how I am wrong. And each time I ask, you come _forward_ instead. Hard? Complicated? You still come forward, to extend help, to offer comfort. If there is no road, you build the road.” He sighed. “That is a very lovely metaphor in the original.”

“Yes, it would be. Building roads isn’t just utilitarian to you.” It was hard to get the words out. Her throat and face had gone tight and prickly. 

“Failure between us was always inevitable,” he said “You said so at the beginning. Your persistence and gentleness through our repeated attempts to understand one another inspire me with hope. And here we are again, tired and confused and—I am wondering if your faith in me is shaken.”

Kim shook her head, didn’t meet his gaze.

“You think perhaps I am compromised,” he ventured. “That the flipsides programming included a virus that is subduing me even now.”

Kim narrowed her eyes. “No! I just—I know you will see to yourself last, that you’ll suffer much longer than is actually necessary. She ripped the lines out—I _know_ that damages the ports. And I get that you have a lot of issues, and that everything else is somehow more important than you being hurt—”

“The people I am responsible for are more important than my discomfort and inconvenience, yes.”

Well, that was just—But, who was—Oh. Shit. “I think I might be responsible for you, though? In a way. That’s why I go too when Ratchet works on you?”

He paused. “There are limits. You maintain too much interference would violate my…medical privacy.”

“Oh,” Kim said in a small voice. “I…I’m doing it wrong. I’m sorry. I—how do I do this? How do I do it without…being disrespectful or making you think of think of unpleasant things or crossing the line?” She stopped. How did she do any of this? “What should I have said, when you came?”

“Don’t worry about it. I am closely monitored. Ratchet is very conscientious in his duty.” Stiff. Flat. He had dropped the nonverbal pack. “In any case, the Matrix is currently connected to my firewall. It would not tolerate a breach.”

Wow. This was actually getting worse. Kim thought longingly of the small, human spaces of the dorm, so much easier than this desperate, fraught conversation. She closed her eyes. Her hands, she realized, were knotted together.

And he was still silent.

Kim opened her eyes and took a breath. “This is hard. I’m not giving up. There is a lot I don’t understand. What…do you want me to have said, when you came home? Just now, what should I have said? Or would you have preferred I not be here at all?”

His chin snapped up in surprise. “Of course I prefer you be here--! Yes.” He paused. “We are having a misunderstanding neither of us understands.”

“I’m sorry.”

He drew in his legs and lowered his helm. All the tiny lenses of his optical arrays were wide and pale. It was a lot of mech body language, and Kim had no idea how to interpret it.

“Please. Tell me what I should have said. Please. I can’t promise I can do it right, but I don’t even know how to try.”

“It isn’t a road we’re building. It’s a bridge.”

“How should I have begun? What should I have said?” she tried to think. “The people closest to you approach when you’re upset. I stayed too far away? Or—Ratchet and Ironhide and Chromia don’t let you get away with shit. I should have acknowledged that you made an error?”

He started to transform, stopped, lowered his helm further. “If I consolidate my mass, you will interpret that as apology.”

Kim felt knocked over by the wave of helpless confusion. “Box yourself? Yes. I can’t see how a formal apology—“ She broke off, her voice stolen by the pain of holding back tears. “If that’s what you want to do…do what you need to do….”

“Not apology. An…extreme relenting. But you would not understand that meaning, and if I do it, my spark will be buried too far in for mutual overlapping. That would imply…I’m not even sure. It doesn’t come up for mecha.”

“Oh.” Her voice shook.

“Kim. I interpreted the absence of communication from you this afternoon and evening as having informational content. It was an ambiguous message. I attributed forty-three percent probability that it was disinterest—you are very busy, the situation was under control. There was a further twenty-nine percent that you were angry over the danger my actions caused for human staff, including yourself. I placed the probability that you were disgraced by my incompetence at only nine percent, but I did not discount it. The other possibilities I ranked by--”

Stunned, feeling slightly sick, she sank onto the steps. Oh, god. Oh, god. “No,” she whispered.

“Another of my errors,” he said gently. “I overlooked the fact that you have only one node for processing communications input, you were aware that I was busy, you carefully limit the demands you place on my time, and your radio communications system is not integrated, but on an inefficient external. Your silence was not itself a communications about your opinion or feelings.” 

“No. No. I worried all afternoon—“

“And you waited. Patience, persistence, and humility are considered virtues for anthropologists. So you waited.”

“Almost,” Kim said, trying to be clear. “But I wasn’t waiting for professional reasons. Humans _wait_ , when they love each other.” _I knew I was doing it. I didn’t realize it was the wrong thing._ “It’s stupid.”

“It is understandable. And pitiable. Your people have had distance communication for only a _Vorn_. There has been no recourse but to wait, in silence and ignorance, to know the fate of those you care about. For the uncounted generations.”

Kim laughed weakly. “Yep. Pretty sad. Scrap. No wonder this conversation went so badly.”

“Despite how careful we have both been.”

 _‘All you need is love.’_ What a ridiculous lie. She tried to take a deep breath.

He held out a servo. The small plates along his palm were snugged down tight so human clothing or skin wouldn’t get pinched. Another thing he was careful about.

Tired—dear god, let the rest of tonight be easy—she climbed on and allowed herself to be brought in. He was still sitting, so the carrying position wasn’t very far off the ground. Kim leaned in. “Can I see the port? Where she pulled out the cable.”

“The connector was snapped off.” He brought his other wrist around and held it at her eye level. “The hatched is locked until repairs are complete. It will be several more hours.”

Kim ran a gentle finger over the square outline. The door fit neatly under her index finger. She thought for a moment, smiled a little, said, “I have great faith in your internal repair systems.” She let go and leaned back against him.

A soft hum of protoform vibration answered. The happy sound.

Kim patted his chest plate gently. “Will you sing to me?”

“You would not understand the words.”

“Your voice is beautiful. And we can’t do or say anything accidently heartbreaking if you’re singing.”

He chuckled softly, a counterpoint to the even _thrum_ of his protoform.

~TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A gift for everyone who is not spending today Black Friday Shopping. I know it is all pretty awful right now, but hand in there. Blessed Be. 
> 
> Thanks to Martha for--gosh, four years now--of odd detour into giant alien robots. 
> 
> *Anaphora is the use of an expression that depends specifically upon an antecedent expression


	3. US and Them

At six-thirty, Kim turned out for the party with earrings, make-up, and a freshly ironed skirt. Bot country was all dressed up, too: shiny floors, floating lights, and some potted shrubs from the greenhouse on the balcony. The Autobots were cleaned up, too. Kim had spent most of the day washing friends. 

Optimus was at the balcony, examining the play area set up for the kids. They wouldn’t be allowed to mingle freely, of course. Even if all of the humans had been our friends. No. Baby mecha, in a crowd of humans that didn’t know what to expect from them?

Mearing was unpacking set after set of tubular marble ‘tracks.’ Optimus reached over the railing and tapped one. “Fragile,” he said. “They may break it.”

Mearing shrugged. “Toys break, Optimus. That isn’t a reason not to play.” She paused. “This isn’t spoiling them. This is a developmental exercise. And it’s important they not get bored tonight.” Kim had never seen Mearing defensive before. She managed not to smile.

Optimus leaned down and gave the children a firm look. “You will cooperate with your Auntie Charlie. You will cooperate enthusiastically and with gratitude. I impress upon you, it is not merely her kindness and generosity to yourselves you are repaying. This human was our first ally on Earth. She has devoted her life to protecting this planet. Her planning and political acumen are what made a treaty with Earth governments possible. Indeed, she is the reason any of us survived long enough to open negotiations.”

Mearing wasn’t even blushing at this. “I’m in charge,” she said gently. “No matter what happens, you must trust me.”

Hot Rod and Serenity nodded and promised to be good. 

Optimus offered Kim a hand and they headed toward the Ground Bridge.

“I’m surprised you’ve got Mearing babysitting,” Kim said. “Surely, she’s not the only one you can spare to handle the kids.”

“Spare? No.”

Kim hesitated. “Can I ask about your thinking?”

“Tell me where you would deploy her this evening,” he said.

“At the party. She’s very politically sharp.”

“Mmmm. She is also very powerful and has earned a reputation for being ruthless. If our strategy was to intimidate our guests, she would be an ideal choice.”

“Ick,” Kim said. “Scrap.”

“There is another concern. While it is vital our guests observe and perhaps even speak to our children, not all of them believe our species to be sentient. Charlotte will not permit any of them to test that hypothesis in a way that would be insulting or cruel.”

Kim had no answer for that. Yes, it was asking a lot of most humans to imagine thinking, feeling _life_ that was so completely different. But some humans were shitty to other humans, so ignorance was no excuse.

“It matters,” Optimus added, “that I have set a human to… babysit.” Kim thought that the word he might have been thinking of was ‘guard.’ “This demonstration of my trust in a human cannot be faked. And putting Charlotte specifically in that position further increases her credibility in negotiation to come.”

Kim felt she should say something. “That is a very convoluted strategy for picking a baby sitter. Oh. That sounds like a criticism. I’m just sorry you can’t just….assign the next person on the rotation and go to a party.”

Optimus clicked a soft amusement. “Compared to dealing with the Grand Senate, humans politics are actually pretty direct. Perhaps because you can literally have only one conversation at a time.”

Before Kim could sort out the implications of that, they had arrived. The arrival area was already crowded: every bot seven feet or shorter, Ratchet’s trainees, the off duty Bridge techs, a couple of rail-gun crews, and all of the NEST officers were waiting around the edges of the room to greet the arriving guests and walk them back to the party. Slow. Friendly. Casual.

Except nobody was looking casual. The military personnel were standing at attention. Almost everyone else was fidgeting or sweating.

“Stand by,” Fixit said over the speaker. The incoming Bridge alarm sounded. 

Bill Fowler stepped forward, looked around, and lifted his hand like an orchestra conductor. “Smiles, everyone. _Smiles_.”

In the seconds it took for the Bridge to shimmer to life, Kim caught the reference. She was laughing when Drift and Bulkhead drove through the event horizon laden with passengers. When she would have stepped (casually, cheerfully) forward, Lennox’s voice in her ear stopped her. “ _Indy, we’re going to need you to reposition. We’ve got a party coming in by ground from Nellis_.”

Kim was not in sneakers. Her flats went tap-tap on the floor as she hurried up the curving corridor. “Who was on the guest list from Nellis? I don’t remember—”

“ _Not from Nellis. Through Nellis. Dang. I gotta talk to Bee. ETA fifteen minutes. Just be charming_.”

Kim squeezed out a bit more speed, thinking hard about the guest list. Had someone balked at the alien teleport machine? If so, they had gotten past research.

Someone not on the guest list? Someone who wouldn’t bridge and who was powerful enough to just grab a flight to an air force base? It couldn’t be a president, not from the US or anywhere else—heads of state were prohibited from being in the same room as mecha by the Nonbiological Extraterrestrial Species Treaty.

Slipstream trotted smoothly up, Max splayed comfortably on his shoulder. “What’s going on?” Kim asked.

“We are greeting guests,” he answered mildly.

Kim opened her mouth to demand a little more detail, but it was too late. Two cars came in, escorted by Arcee, one in front, two in the back. A door on the first sedan popped open as soon as it stopped, and a short, soft, balding man bounced out. He was dressed ”casually,” or perhaps what counted as “casually” for ADHD doctors who wound up in the senate. He had on a polo shirt buttoned to the collar, stone washed jeans, and wing-tip shoes. “Dr. Montgomery. How nice to see you again! Isn’t that hologram magnificent? Descriptions really don’t do it justice. I really thought we were driving toward solid rock.”

Kim blinked. “Senator Briggs. I thought you were coming by Bridge?”

He had turned back to hold the car door for someone else. “Funny story about that,” he said cheerfully. “My friend Bingo isn’t allowed to teleport. There was quite an argument about that, apparently, because aside from being terrifying, it sounds fantastic. I hate airplanes. But rules are rules, so he had to take the long way. And, of course, my new friend Amy isn’t supposed to be here at all.” He wiggled his eyebrows significantly, and motioned to the woman who had climbed out of the car.

Woman? His new friend Amy seemed to be a super model: Long legs, miniskirt, tiny jacket over a tight tee. She was Asian, and the hair that almost reached her hips was black and completely straight and shiny. Her make-up was perfect, after a trip by plane and hours in a car. Kim blinked very slowly. What the _hell_? Humans in real life didn’t look this good. Spies in movies looked this good.

Maybe spies in real life looked that good? Wishing desperately she had an internal radio so she could call for help or give a warning, Kim smiled and stepped forward. “I don’t know who thinks you aren’t supposed to be here, Amy, but we’re happy you came. It’s great to meet you. I’m Kim Montgomery. I work in cultural exchange.”

John Keller had just gotten out of the second car with a very bland, unmemorable, middle-aged white guy. They were both wearing sports jackets, but the guest also had on cowboy boots. Was he familiar? Flinching, Kim realized was the aforementioned ‘friend Bingo’ was Robert Russel, the American vice president.

Slipstream came forward to greet the vice president (and wasn’t Kim glad she’d dodged _that_ snowball), and the elegant Amy tapped Kim’s shoulder. “Is that a real cat? Or a mechanical model of a cat?”

Kim gulped. “Real cat. I picked it up from the pound myself.”

“Why?”

“Well, Slipstream couldn’t go himself.” She relented. “He was curious about having a pet. And cats are so beautiful. We lucked out: Max is a very chill and friendly cat. She doesn’t seem to notice anything unusual.”

Beside the second car, the vice president was scratching Max on the head while Slipstream watched approvingly.

“Oh, hey.” Kim said. “It’s a long drive up from…the base. How about something to drink? Or maybe a restroom?”

As the party started to move, Kim scowled at Slipstream behind her hand and made faces at Amy. Slipstream pointed a puzzled sensor at Kim, and she mouthed impatiently, “Who is she?”

The answer came conveniently over her headset. “Her name is Park Ji-woo. She is an agent of North Korea. Not a secret agent, obviously.”

Oh, boy. North Korea didn’t have formal diplomatic relations with the US, and their position on Cybertronians was that they were a capitalist hoax.

Bulkhead had set up the temporary sanitary facilities across from the med bay. They looked nothing like portapotties. They worked nothing like portapotties, too, and Amy came out looking disconcerted. “Am I permitted to ask what happens to the… objects?”

“Flash-dehydrated down to pellets,” Kim answered.

She cast a nervous glance at the cubical.

Kim smiled brightly. “Snacks?”

They visited the buffet, watched some of the karaoke. Kim was grateful for the excuse not to talk. What was she supposed to say to this spy Briggs had dumped on her? She had no hope of being subtle. And should she try to hide details? Or overwhelm Ms. Park with the raw scope of Autobot technology and power so that she reported back that resistance was futile.

Kim was terrible at this sort of games. She’d worked very hard to be direct and clear, not cunning and tricksy. “So. Amy,” Kim said when a pause between songs had drawn out long enough to be awkward. “Most people are here because they don’t believe mecha are real, don’t believe they’re aliens, or don’t believe they are sentient. Which are you?” Nope. Not cunning at all. Well. Maybe coming to the point would move things forward.

The lovely eyes narrowed. “Believe? Belief is a luxury. I’m looking for advantage.”

“Oh.” Kim said. “Well. Sign into NEST and get along with everyone else. Otherwise you’re left behind.”

Park Ji-woo looked totally unimpressed. Even as Kim was praying for rescue, Mirage pulled up to them in alt. “The advantage,” he said in his quiet, mellow voice, “lies only in chasing the Decepticons off Earth. As long as they are here, every country is in peril, every last human.” He transformed slowly, into a root form of just over twenty feet: gleaming, deep blue, breathtaking. “Your people and mine fight an implacable enemy. The _advantages_ after the war…there is a term that has fallen out of favor among the Americans and appears not at all in some other human languages. ‘Peace dividend.’ I’d be very pleased to speak to you about it.”

Kim took a long step backwards. _Dang_. How did Mirage pull this off with a straight face? How could he be so suave and warm in the face of human stupidity and short sightedness? Talking to a spy who would surely try to play him?

Of course, Mirage was an agent, too. A spy. He had a thousand years’ more experience than this poor human. Kim almost felt sorry for her.

Almost.

She looked around for someone else to casually mingle with. Senator Briggs was by the buffet, methodically examining each branch of broccoli before biting off the florets, examining the stem again, and popping it in. The man next to him—no pretense of casualness there, he was in a three piece suit—was scowling at the stage where Ironhide was introducing a song of profound philosophy. Bobby and Carly were positioned on the human stage, apparently playing back up singers.

The song was “A Puzzlement” from _The King and I._ The performance wasn’t particularly…anything. Not bad. Not great. Bobby got confused on the verses once, which set Carly giggling.

Kim sidled up to Briggs, who was staring, his raw vegetables forgotten on his plate.

“Kind of overwhelming, isn’t it?” Kim whispered sympathetically.

The other man answered: “It looks impressive. But it’s just mimicry. Siri can manage that.”

Kim looked him up and down. “The first song on the schedule was a hip-hop mashup of ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ and ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow.’ You can’t say Jazz somehow heard _that_ done somewhere and copied it.”

Briggs brightened. “I missed that one. Was it good?”

Kim’s smile was suddenly warm. “It was fantastic in rehearsal.” Should she show him the sparklings? Maybe not yet. “Anybody want a tour of the infirmary?”

***

It was not the sort of party where people stayed up all night and misbehaved. Not that Kim had gone to a lot of those kinds of parties. But by ten, the DFAC crew was clearing away the mess, the children had been sent off to bed, the last guests were being picked up by the Autobots assigned to transport them through the Bridge and home again. 

Kim felt like she’d just had a very good day at work, not like she’d partied herself out and was ready to collapse.

She walked through the Bot commissary, the assembly area, even paced the yellow line at the infirmary. There was really nothing for her to do. Snagging the remains of a platter of mini samosas, she headed home.

The dorm did seem like home now. A kind of odd, crowded, commune home that didn’t really have a living room or a back yard, but still. Home.

Chip was in the kitchen, getting out ingredients for hot cocoa. “Am I making two?” he asked.

“Sure. Thanks. Samosa?”

“Yay.” He glanced over his shoulder. “I miss restaurants. Already.”

Kim got down another mug and brought it over. The mug had dolphins on it. “How do you think it went?” she asked, sitting down at the small table. “The party?”

“Ratchet behaved himself. Six of the guests participated in the Karaoke. No fights or panic attacks. So. A win, I guess.”

Kim ran her hands through her hair. “I still have to do notes tonight. These sort of events….eventually Earthlings will get used to them, and it will be too late….”

“How’s that going? The ethnography end of things?”

“Great. All the informants answer questions. Even the human ones. When I can figure out what to ask, it’s fantastic.”

Chip had a whisk now, vigorously whipping the hot milk. “What kinds of patterns are showing up in the interspecies romantic relations?”

It was a moment before she could answer. “I don’t know.” It wasn’t much of an answer. It was an embarrassingly bad answer. Casually, she picked up a cold samosa.

“I’m not asking for specifics,” he said, still fussing with the hot milk. “Is romantic even the right word? Amorous? Affectionate? Attachment? Oh—you’ve got a sample of four. Maybe five, if I’m right about Drift and the geologist. Are they all completely different? No patterns at all yet?”

“Not Drift and the geologist,” Kim said thickly. “Springer and the geologist. But I don’t think it’s serious. Most of Springer’s attention is on Arcee right now. Not that I think he has a shot.”

“So four then. Four units?” He hummed under his breath. “You can’t say couple. I’m not sure what conveys the complicated thing with Ironhide and both Bobby and Carly. What are you calling it?”

“I haven’t tried to call it anything,” Kim said.

“Are _they_ calling it something?” And yes, of course, the linguist would want to know the labels.

“I don’t know. I haven’t asked. I’m…not actually collecting data on…that sort of interspecies relationship?” She hadn’t meant it to come out as a question, but out loud it sounded really lame.

“Seriously? Your job is literally to observe how mecha and humans interact? And _this_ you aren’t collecting data on?” He set a mug of cocoa on the table in front of Kim and sat down across from her. He seemed both curious and a little judgy. Kim was reminded that he was at least ten years older than she was, with a total of four advanced degrees. Geez.

She picked up the mug. She put it down. She folded her hands tidily in her lap. “I don’t think I can collect good data about this. I’m…compromised.”

He squinted at her. “What does that even mean? Compromised? You disapprove or something?”

Kim sighed, shook her head, thought about not answering. Denying it would just make it worse, though. “I am compromised. I’ve been in love with him since the first day. Since that empty, horrible hanger at Nellis when he transformed and…. And that isn’t even true.” Kim buried her face in her hands. “I’ve been in love with him since he asked me what a wig was for and had me account for Napoleon Chagnon.”

“Oh. Yeah.” He chuckled. “I grok that.” Kim glanced up at him. He sounded sympathetic, but his expression was still baffled. 

Kim steeled herself and tried again. “I’m profoundly biased. So… I have to be careful about everything. And I certainly can’t trust myself to take notes on…whatever it is Optimus and I are in.”

“Wait…you’re compromised because you are _participating_ in the thing you were hired to do participant observation on?”

Well, when you put it that way…. No. Kim shuttered. “He’s an informant. We’re--” _Sort of married._ She could not say it. “I can’t act like I’m neutral. And that isn’t even the worst of it. Doing research on someone you are in a relationship with--”

“He’s an informant, and it is very important not to take advantage of informants when they are in a vulnerable position or have less power than you. But that’s not the case here. He’s the one telling you what questions to ask. I don’t think-- Oh.” He lowered his voice. “Is that what you’re worried about? He’ll use your relationship to manipulate your results?”

Kim looked up sharply. “What? Of course not. If he wanted to cheat, he could fake any document he wanted, published anywhere in the world. He wouldn’t need an anthropologist to lie for him.” 

Chip pulled back. “Damn. Right. We have to trust him. You’re right. So it isn’t that—Or, maybe the problem is the personal half of that? You have to trust him professionally. Is it too much to trust him with your feelings, too?”

 _No._ “ _Trust_ isn’t the issue.” The pain that was coming had nothing to do with trust. 

Except, no, that wasn’t fair. She’d tried not to think about her feelings about him even before she knew his strategy for ending the war.

Chip was waiting, looking unimpressed with her excuses.

“I trust him.”

He lifted an eyebrow, a trick Kim had never managed. “You trust him. You’re doing the thing you are supposed to be gathering data on. You are both being careful that neither the data nor the other person’s autonomy is being sacrificed. I don’t think it’s an unsolvable problem. If anything, the biggest risk of mistakes is in taking data on the person supervising your research. I mean, if anything was going to be a problem.”

Oh. Well. Kim made a face.

“Although nobody probably foresaw that relationships would be quite so close when this all started. I mean, nobody could be expected to foresee that. It isn’t your fault.” He frowned at her, thinking. “So…is this a Malinowski thing? Are you a chauvinist, all freaked out because you have a great passion for _the other_ or something?”

“ _Excuse_ me,” Kim began indignantly. She couldn’t maintain the feeling of offense, though. She had screwed up too badly, in too many ways, to defend herself. “Well. Okay. I’m freaked out about having biological feelings for a person who can’t return them and doesn’t even know what they feel like. I mean, that’s…. _Is_ that immoral? Am I evil?”

“I don’t think feelings are immoral. Pressuring him to do things he felt uncomfortable about would be immoral. Abusing your access to get at information an interviewer wouldn’t normally get would be wrong. Letting him dictate your conclusions….” He tapped his fingers on the mug. “I expect the head of state for an entire planet has pretty good boundaries, though, so you can probably work it all out if you, you know, talk to him about it.”

She hadn’t. Of course she hadn’t. She hadn’t even been able to stand thinking about it. “Oh, god,” Kim groaned. “This is all so….” Complicated. Terrifying. Weird. “Unprofessional.”

“It isn’t to them, though,” Chip said. “The hardline recreational interface, overlapping, personal relationships, they’re all a separate issue from chains of command, you know.”

Kim thought about Chromia and Ironhide, Mirage and Hound. Working together did not stop them from intimacy. “Ratchet doesn’t interface his patients, though.”

“That is because Ratchet is pissed off about the war, not because it’s an ethics violation of some kind. Anyway, Fixit occasionally partners with Bulkhead. And Wheeljack has been intimate with almost half the base.”

“Wheeljack? How do you know this? I don’t know this!”

He shrugged. “Blaster likes to dish.”

“Oh.” Kim could see that. She mainly relied on Slipstream for her gossip, and she’d made a point not to ask about anybody’s sex lives. No. Not ‘sex.’ This had nothing to do with reproduction for mecha. No reproduction, no glands, no evolution mucking about to trick people into passing genetic material around or form pair bonds to increase the care for helpless offspring. For mecha, intimacy was just intimacy. It wasn’t physical, so it couldn’t be compelled.

What a tempting thought. Just love as you love, forget status and subordination.

 _No._ “I’m not a mech. I am not going native here. Saying I’m collecting data about my own experience with….” With what? What kind of relationship were they having?

Did it matter, Optimus was willing to accept it, whatever it was.

Kim picked up the mug of cocoa and drained it. It was still hot enough to make that unpleasant.

“Look. I admit it’s normal,” Chip was saying, apparently oblivious to Kim’s mental breakdown, “Well, ‘ideal,’ anyway – to keep personal relationships out of research. Usually. When it’s romantic or … passionate? And it’s iffy these days, in patriarchal situations anyway, to have those feelings for a supervisor or teacher. But it isn’t like it can’t be made to work. Mead and Benedict managed it. Don’t look like that; yes, they were, don’t be thick. You can’t say they weren’t professional or their work suffered. It was fine.”

“This is different.”

“Well, yeah. What they did was only about them. Finding out what sort of relationship is possible between humans and extraterrestrials is literally your job.” He paused. “That is actually a lot to ask of anybody. I see why you’re freaked out.”

“I’m supposed to teach humans how to date giant robots—” Kim said numbly.

“No, damnit. You are supposed to teach humans that giant robots are people! And the only thing you have to do that with is your own experience.” He paused, spoke more quietly. “I don’t know how much time we have. We’re lucky we managed to keep a lid on things in Princeton. But that isn’t going to last. Kim. People are going to find out--”

“Chip. I’m so compromised.” The confession was embarrassing. “I _would_ lie for him. I would put him first. Not the data. Not my career. Not the truth. I should quit. That would be the responsible thing, the honorable thing—”

“Bullshit. Even if we had time to bring in someone else, start over—”

“I know we don’t have time!”

“Really? Because you’re kind of putzing around here. I get that this isn’t the sort of career you envisioned or the way you think you should work, but the _Nemesis_ is in orbit, the Autobots are outnumbered by humans four hundred million to one, and you need to collecting all the data, not just the parts that don’t embarrass you.”

Kim closed her eyes.

“I’m sorry. It sucks. Man. Thank God, I’m a linguist, not an ethnographer.”

“You can’t help it,” Kim said dully. “Your brain just…works that way.” Kim hadn’t known many linguists, but they were always too smart.

He shrugged. “Well. Maybe. But either way, I’m too much a coward to be an anthropologist. Participant observation is _not my job_. Also, kicking you in the butt over this isn’t my job. So. It would be great if you would, um….”

Kim nodded. “Get over myself and start taking notes.” She thought about Malinowski’s diaries. Decades after he’d died, people were still judging his feelings. There was no help for it though. If you were telling the truth, you couldn’t lie to yourself. “You asked me…about patterns,” she said softly.

“Yeah?”

“They don’t have biological families, or most of the problems humans use biological families to solve. Their closest relationships are workgroups and friendships.”

“Normally, do they pick their work groups?”

“On Cybertron? That depended on the power and status of the workgroup and the individuals. Frequently not.” Kim cleared her throat. “Here, of course, it’s…whoever made it to earth.”

“So if you got assigned to work with a jerk?”

“There you are. Like having an uncle who’s a jerk. You don’t have to be close to people in your work group, emotionally. But you can still be stuck with them.”

“And if you do have a choice who joins your work group, you choose very carefully.”

Kim nodded. “Ratchet was very, very picky about his trainees….”

“He calls them students. The distinction is important in the Cybertronix.”

“I know.” Kim thought for a moment. “His relationship with Pierre isn’t just student, I think. I think they’re friends.”

“Are Maggie and Fixit friends?”

“No, Fixit is in love with her. I don’t know how. He hasn’t got oxytocin or serotonin. It doesn’t make sense. But he’s in love.”

“Well,” Chip conceded. “Maggie is a fabulous human. If I was into girls….” He shrugged.

“Oh, god,” Kim breathed. “I’m going to have to ask them.” She was going to have to ask them if it was a physical relationship. She was going to have to ask them if it was exclusive. Damn. Damn. Damn.

***

The children were so excited they were running in circles in the assembly area. It was the first time Hot Rod had tried to _run_ anywhere, since at every excuse he used wheels. He could not match his sister’s speed on a curve, and since a circle was all curve there was a lot of falling down.

Optimus, standing by the balcony, was watching them with a soft fondness that made Kim’s mirror neurons fire so hard her eyes felt prickly. He had waited hundreds of years for these babies.

“You should come,” Kim said impulsively. “We can reschedule and do it when you’re free.”

A soft protoform _hum_. “You cannot tell _them_ we are rescheduling. They cannot contain themselves as it is. And I will feel better if they are elsewhere when we wake Sundoor.”

“She’s totally safe now.” Wasn’t she?

“She is not a Decepticon. She is not—exactly—the person Blaster and his cohort knew. She may yet request to be deactivated for the duration of the war.” 

Kim glanced up. She stepped closer to the rail and _h’mm_ ed softly. 

“Mirage has signaled that the camouflage field is up at the golf course. It’s time.”

There was, on the east edge of the base, an abandoned 9-hole golf course left over from the cold war. It was in a little valley between a rocky hill and a crumbling mesa. It was low and had bad drainage, so every few years rain turned it into a marsh for a few weeks, and most of the time there were patches of grass to break up the brown ground between the junipers and pinion pines. There was even a left-over flowering agave. The same intermittent marshiness that had led some colonel to put in the golf course still made it inconvenient for military uses. It was the perfect playground. 

Ironhide and Springer were coming down the corridor. They had claimed the honor of transporting the children to the surface. Possibly on the basis of seniority, although they both were armed like super-tanks, so it might be that. 

Speaking in Cybertronix, Springer scooped Hot Rod into his arms and transformed around him--not into his usual helicopter, but into a lime-green minivan. Triple-changer. His T-cog could manage two alts without a major structural redesign.

“I’ll see you later,” Optimus said. 

“Good luck,” Kim answered.

Ratchet had settled at the bottom of the steps to wait for the humans who would join the outing: Kim, Carly, Dr. Nomura, and Lennox. They would have to ride in the back of the ambulance since Ratchet was ambivalent about having humans in his cab. Fortunately, Ratchet’s rear compartment was _not_ kitted out for human emergency medical care. It just had benches and seat belts. Kim tried to ignore the lack of release button on the seat belt latch.

It was a nice morning for an outing: high-seventies, no humidity to speak of, no wind. The ground was dry, but some of the patchy grass was still green from the last rain. Overhead the inner side of a camouflage field shimmered and glistened.

Ratchet got to the little basin first because Ironhide and Springer were driving very slowly so that their passengers could make the most of the drive through the base. Mirage, Bee, and Windblade were already stationed at the perimeter of the designated exploration area. 

After a quick consultation, the four humans were set on a rocky outcrop. They had a good view and were close enough to answer questions, but not so close that they might get trampled by baby mecha overwhelmed by chaotic sensor data.

The moment Springer opened his door, Hot Rod bounded out, lost his balance on the uneven ground, and fell into the dirt.

Seri, watching the spectacular fall through Ironhide’s window, leaned out, unfolded a probe from one of her servos, and poked the dirt. 

Hot Rod was shouting a scale of sonar calls. The first time in his life without walls. Goodness.

Seri was scrambling onto Ironhide’s roof. Kim wasn’t sure how she was getting purchase on his slick, black carapace.

Hot Rod was trying to stand up. His limbs tapped the ground and then flinched away. Each pine needle and bit of rock seemed to be alarming.

Seri was perched on Ironhide’s roof, shouting sensor scales at the open sky.

Kim glanced at Ratchet. “Is this going badly?” she asked.

“Not particularly,” Ratchet said. All of his antennae were aimed at the children.

“Um, they’re literally howling at the void,” Kim pointed out.

“They have very little experience integrating sensor information. Earth’s environment is initially taxing, even to well-traveled mecha. They will adapt.”

“Oh. So they’re fine, but the Earth is messed up.”

Ratchet nodded absently. “Of the fifty-three celestial bodies I have visited, Earth is by far the worst.”

Carly sniggered.

“Ah. Perhaps that was harshly put,” Ratchet said, glancing at her briefly. “The ceaseless activity of Earth’s life forms creates an unusually chaotic environment.

Suddenly, Seri launched herself off of Ironhide’s roof and charged across the ground on all fours, galloping like a horse. She stopped at the base of a cactus, scrambling around. “Where did it go? There was an _animal_! A wild animal! It’s not in my library! A new animal!”

Hot Rod scrambled forward, his five appendages badly mistimed so that sometimes he fell over.

Before he reached her, Seri pounced like Max and came up with _something_ caged in her metal fingers. Trembling and careful, she made her way to Ratchet and held up her find. “What is this animal? It is not an insect. Can I make friends with it? Will the humans want to eat it?”

“It is called a _scorpion_. Humans consider it a pest species. They will not want to eat it.”

Seri’s optics reset. “Your file says ‘hazardous.’ How is it hazardous. Oh.” She brought her hands close to her sensors and peered at the contents. “It is not hazardous to mecha. Can I bring it home?”

“It lives _here_ ,” Hot Rod said indignantly before Ratchet could answer. “We are not kidnapping Earth life.” He paused and glanced nervously at the humans watching from the top of the rock. “Earth life has a fear of being kidnapped by aliens.”

“We are not aliens. We were born here. Earth life keeps pets.”

Kim felt a stab of panic. The babies were not ready for pets. “Start with plants,” she said quickly. “Hot Rod has a tree. We’ll get Seri…something. After you successfully keep them alive for a while, we can move on to…something in a terrarium.”

Carly sat down on the rock and hid her face behind her bent knees. Lennox was turned away, laughing silently. Ratchet said, “Release the scorpion. You may observe it _in situ_ if it allows it.”

Sulking a little (her antennae pig tales drooped), Seri set the creature down. Both children squatted beside it. “It is pretty,” Hot Rod announced. “Perhaps I will grow my armor to curve like that.”

They watched the scorpion until it scuttled down a hole, then began minute examinations of the squat pinion trees. 

Kim sighed. As far as plants and animals went, Kim thought Nevada was pretty empty. What would happen if—when—they took the kids to a forest, a lake—oh, god a swamp!

After about a couple of hours, Ratchet signaled an end to the excursion, and the complaining children were gathered up. Despite their protests of ‘not in need of recharge,’ they were both shut down when they got back to ‘Bot country.

Kim had a calendar event requesting her on the mesa ‘at convenience.’ She could guess what that was about. As expected, Optimus was there with Sundoor, General Morshower, Mearing, and Bill Fowler. 

Sundoor was broader than a human, but not taller. Well, not taller than a _tall_ human. She sat a little apart from the humans on a neatly trimmed boulder. Her paint job, which had looked pink in the infirmary lights, was now looked like a dazzling array of peach and coral. Perhaps she had changed her nanites for this interview.

Kim felt a wave of sympathy: it was understandable that the humans would be worried about her state of mind, but facing _this_ on the first day free on an alien planet—

Now close enough to hear, Kim realized it was the humans who were answering questions. They were sitting on folding chairs clearly borrowed from the infirmary. Kim started to detour to where her own chair was tucked under one of the solar pods, but Optimus caught her eye and shook his head.

Kim had stuffed her headset into her pocket. It would be noticeable if she fished it out, but she did casually pull out her phone as she ambled over.

SIT WITH ME.

Not a lot of explanation there. Optimus was off to one side leaning forward with his arms folded on the ground. His legs…did not bear looking at. They were folded up in some strange Transformer origami. Careful not to hesitate, Kim approached his wrist, looking for a foothold to scramble up.

Mearing was explaining, “Well, states are geographically bounded organizations. Usually, a person is a citizen or national of the state where they are born. Sometimes, the determination is the nationality of their parents.”

“Their…parents?” Sundoor’s voice was genderless and bland, but inflected enough to show she was running the basic language app. “Geography or breeders determines an individual’s political affiliation?”

The three humans glanced at each other. The general sighed. “Yes.”

“And you are all the same species—” Sundoor broke off, focusing her optics and audials on Kim, who was hoisting herself onto Optimus’s arm. She asked a question in Cybertronix. Kim recognized the polite request-for-information modifier and two of Optimus’s titles: _Bearer of Holy Wisdom_ and _Beloved of Primus_.

Whatever the question, his quiet answer was, “No.” Not a refusal, a correction of information.

Sundoor watched Kim settle on Optimus’s wrist and then turned back to her informants. “You are all the same species, but you have different governments—not merely different internal alliances, but different sovereign governments. There is no absolute centralization. And these _countries_ are not chosen because of different governing philosophies or differing structures.”

They nodded.

“But…surely you can see….” She paused for a long time, optics unfocused as she rifled through files. “Surely you can see this is inefficient and unjust?

“Now, wait just a minute—” the general began.

“I’m not sure you understand—” Mearing said at the same time.

Fowler threw up his hands. “Obviously. But most people don’t _want_ to live a different country than their parents.”

Sundoor’s optics focused hard on Fowler. “Why?”

He opened his mouth. He shut it. Frowned. “I don’t know if you will understand this, either. I love my mother. I loved my grandpa. I know family doesn’t mean anything to you—”

“Humans have short lifespans, protracted dependency periods for offspring, and comparatively few children per nest. These relationships last a lifetime and are usually very intense.” Kim winced. It had been translated to Cybertronix and back, so the wording wasn’t exact, but Kim recognized the substance of one of her own orientation brochures.

“Yeah… _that_ …sort of,” Fowler muttered.

It went on for another hour and a half. For the most part, Sundoor seemed to understand the Earth situation files all right. She seemed to have trouble believing them. She asked about health care and how it felt to—as a species—have such a poor idea about how your own mechanics worked. She asked about how people chose careers. She asked about waste management.

Every few minutes she glanced at Kim, seated on Optimus’s smooth, cool (hard) armor. She directed no questions to Kim. So, Kim just watched, her butt slowly growing numb. She wasn’t going to fidget. She was willing to bet that the question Sundoor had asked Prime was either about whether Kim was dangerous or whether her touch was somehow defiling to his holy person. 

Finally, Sundoor stood up and turned to Prime. “I apologize for doubting you. They are, indeed, as...” her gesture took in the entire planet, “peculiar as the files indicate.” She looked around, sprouting a small sensor array that looked like a fan of small feathers. “It was wrong of me to complain. Compared to our options, this world is very,” she paused, folded the feathers, fanned them again, ‘very congenial to our needs. A comprehensible native species and an abundance of energon is far more than we had any reason to expect to find anywhere. You have my gratitude in bringing us here.” And then she folded herself into a box about the size of an ottoman.

Optimus rumbled slightly, and Kim thought that something about her statement has displeased him. Scooping Kim into his hand, he rose sedately and set her on his shoulder. Kim carefully kept her limbs out of the armor gaps and gripped the base of his audial antenna for balance. Her hand was next to a heat sensor, there, but the other humans present would probably not recognize the intimacy.

“I realize, Sundoor, that a difficult and unsettling road has brought you here. Adjustment to life among the different human cultures does involve patience and forbearance on the part of all parties. I have every confidence that you will adapt successfully. Your addition to our small community here is very welcome.” He paused, optics shifting to the humans. “I reiterate that—since our community on Earth is so small—dispensation is given to bypass all optional formalities.”

Sundoor unboxed and stood still, looking a little awkward. Optimus stepped in front of her—close enough to overlap—and graciously thanked Morshower, Fowler, and Mearing with their help. Kim glanced back at Sundoor. She was staring out toward Jasper, feathery sensors waving as though there was a stiff wind. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, Martha, for saving me from so many embarrassing mistakes.


	4. Thomas Theorem

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To everyone who asked:  
> *"If the question is permitted, Beloved of Primus, does the moist alien scuttling up your carapace pose a danger to the sacred person of the Bearer of Holy Wisdom?"

Journal exerpt

_This should be easy, right? Just write down what’s going on. And if I’m writing down my own stuff, at least I know what I’m thinking. I should just do it. Nobody’s going to read this for decades. ~~We’ll probably both be dead long before~~_

_*_

_They don’t have special separate terms of endearment for relationships with recreational interfacing. Beloved friend covers it. If the relationship extends for a long period of time or a couple or group move in together they say f_ _온입니_ _c d . It doesn’t gloss into English at all. Ratchet and Optimus say you could use the word ‘family.’ Hound tells me the word ‘gestalt’ would convey it better, but that already has a mech concept attached to it in the lexicon. According to Fixit, they are all making this too hard and I should translate it ‘flowing-with.’ I wonder why he thinks that makes sense in English._

_*_

_Don’t discuss a person’s recreational interfaces with an uninvolved person while a discussed party is present. The uninvolved person showing interest in the activity would be an oblique proposition, which is awkward if neither of them is interested._

_*_

_Touch isn’t very meaningful for mecha. Or pleasurable. They know we do that. They talk to each other, not cuddle. They talk a lot. Over radio when they aren’t together. And sometimes they just broadcast a carrier wave. Electromagnetic overlapping communicates content and is symbolic. Meaningful. Affectionate. Humans don’t usually notice it, not consciously._

_*_

_Fixit is writing a treatise on human sexuality and gender. He is researching it with Maggie. I am tabling this topic. I don’t even know where I’d start if I was going to ask questions._

_*_

_Ironhide thinks Bobby and Carly are adorable. Apparently they frequently and enthusiastically engage in rituals of affection. It makes their fields pleasurable. He has adjusted his alt mode infrastructure so that his spark casing is directly under the back seat so he can take advantage of the ‘savoryness’ of their coupling._

_~~Yeah. I have no idea what is going on here. Well. It’s Ironhide. He is experienced and healthy and he deeply enjoys connecting with others. I guess~~ _ _._

_I probably know what is going on here. Ironhide loves his humans back. Ironhide performing his duties and Ironhide performing his interaction persona seems very broad and kind of gruff. Ironhide when he’s designing something (I’ve seen this, like, twice) is focused and businesslike and cold. But Ironhide is very sweet and tender. He is completely open about finding Carly fascinating and deeply trusts Bobby. He loves them. They love him. They are managing to communicate this._

_I can’t tell if Carly and Bobby are actually interested in each other, though. I mean, objectively, I suppose they’re both pretty hot. And they both have high-stress jobs. So they might just be friends with benefits. Or they might just be frustrated that ‘Hide doesn’t have a desire for the same sort of physical affection. They don’t act like they are in love with each other, but I’m not sure how to bring it up._

_Am I overthinking this?_

_*_

_I’m not good a this. It all feels a little embarrassing. There is lots of things an anthropologist can study that aren’t sex or falling-in-love! And really, it shouldn’t come up with NON-BIOLOGICAL aliens. And you should really not do research on yourself. If you’re going to be taking notes on the inside of your OWN head, you might as well be a philosopher._

_*_

_Bulkhead says Wreckers regularly casually interface. There are different levels of interface. Medical data is comparatively impersonal, although very intimate. That sounds fairly horrible. Then there is professional interface, sharing big packets of data over a cable for security or download speed reasons. And then the way Wreckers do it, which is sending smaller packets of pretty or interesting data and analyzing them together for fun. And then redaction interface, when someone needs help with a software or memory problem, which is what Optimus did with Sundoor. This is very intimate, but, again, not necessarily personal. And then there is the thing they refer to as ‘recreational interfacing’ which includes lowering a lot more firewalls and even diverting small pulses of spark energy._

_I wish I had a port._

_Possibly, that is not healthy. I don’t want to be a mech. But I’m so curious._

_*_

_Strongarm has been married. (I’m surprised. She’s young. Like, only about 800 years old!!). I asked if she would tell me about it. He was older, apparently. Civilian. Quiet. Earnest. Not a war frame—his alt form was slow and not particularly maneuverable. Totally overbuilt for data collection and analysis. Which, apparently, made him fantastic ~~in the sack.~~ On a date. Interfacing partner. _

_A pacifist, though. Someone she had been assigned to escort. They had had profound disagreements about the war. Their separation had been inevitable but painful._

_*_

_So it turns out that humans aren’t alone in the universe after all. And the aliens are comprehensible. Really, that was too much to hope for. Amazing. A dream come true._

_They take quite a bit of explaining. But humans have to be explained to each other, so even that isn’t unusual. So much like us. _

_~~I worry that it might have been a plan, that we’re like them—all the better to fight them.~~ _

_*_

_You are supposed to love your informants. Big love, like, have compassion for their struggles and vulnerabilities, respect their resourcefulness and persistence, be humble and grateful for their help. You are there in the first place not just because you want to know about people, but because you care about people. Love like Jesus. Love like a kindergarten teacher. Love like a doctor._

_The whole core of the ethics discussions in the methods class was that nothing you can learn from a person is worth hurting them for. And even when individuals annoy you or disappoint you or even sabotage or fight you, you are obligated to behave with respect and honesty. At the core of that is that big love._

_You’re not supposed to lust after informants. Sometimes it’s going to happen. Don’t act on it._

_Is what I’m feeling ‘lust’ though? Infatuation, definitely. Very nearly obsession. Sometimes he is so beautiful I can’t breathe. ~~~~_

_~~But I can’t quite picture~~ _

_I don’t know what to do with these feelings. I keep accidently asking him to marry me. And yes, I want him. ~~I want~~_

_I thought it would be one-sided. I thought I’d collect the data and be grateful and respectful and love the informants. I thought I could do the big love while I felt around in the darkness, trying to find explanations and meaning._

_I didn’t expect somebody would be reaching back._

_I didn’t expect to search for meaning with anyone searching as hard as me, to reach for answers and have someone reaching back. I didn’t expect the big love to go both ways._

_There is that arrogance, I guess. A trap they tell us to look out for. You can try really hard to be humble, but always, where you least expect it, you might_

_I don’t think they could have seen this coming though. Never in their wildest dreams did any of my teachers imagine Optimus Prime._

_*_

_I have to go home for Thanksgiving. Well. I’d better. We might be looking at the end of the world. I need to tell everyone I love them. And then I need to come back and do my job. I’m lucky enough to have this work, in the place that matters most in the world right now._


	5. Before, Recently, Yesterday

Kim was scheduled to be picked up by Hound at three on the Friday after Thanksgiving. She got a text at ten minutes till from the base that there would be an indeterminate delay. It didn’t say why.

Kim hurried to the living room to turn on the news. No natural disasters, terrorist attacks, or devastating explosions that might be disguising a Decepticon incursion. She pulled out her phone and checked the internet. Whatever was happening, it hadn’t made the news.

Carefully calm, Kim explained to her parents that her ride had been delayed. Then she mopped the kitchen floor. And fixed everyone cheese and crackers for a snack. And helped Sidney get the Christmas decorations down from the crawl space above the garage. And helped clear off the sideboard in the dining room to make room for the little tabletop tree Dad and Ma were using now.

She helped make dinner—turkey sandwiches—and ate pretending to listen to Ma explain how they were re-organizing the cookbook section of the bookstore. She took out the trash.

She tried not to worry about whatever was happening in Jasper. Maybe it was just a glitch in the Bridge. Fixit and Maggie had taken the holiday to go camping somewhere in northern Australia. All of the ‘Bots could run a Ground Bridge and half of them could do minor repairs, but only a few were able to handle a serious problem. Ratchet was one of those, though. And Ratchet never went anywhere.

Despite herself, Kim wound up sitting beside the front window chewing on her lower lip and checking her phone for special news reports.

There was nothing.

This far north, the sun went down early. The street grew darker, and the Christmas lights on the house across the street came on. They had an inflatable snail in a Santa hat.

At a quarter after seven she got a text that showed a map of her neighborhood with a dot—at last—passing the library. Kim said her good-byes, clutched her overnight bag, and went out to wait at the top of the narrow cement steps that led to the street.

The alt that pulled up wasn’t a Jeep. It was a Hummer. The door opened invitingly and Kim scampered to it. 

“Hi, Bulkhead.” She tossed her bag into the passenger seat and climbed in. The seat belt was around her before she had time to close the door.

She glanced up at the house. Ma was looking out the storm door. Kim waved. “What happened? Is everything all right?”

“The base is secure. Everyone is alive.”

“Shit! What happened?”

It was several long seconds before he answered. “Have you ever heard of scraplets?”

“No? No. Scraplets?”

“A kind of glitch. Self-replicating drones. They turn metal into more scraplets at…well, really fast. They seek out fuel sources. They…they’re horrible.”

Kim turned that over in her mind. “Drones. A Decepticon attack?”

“No. An accident.” He seemed very subdued. “Last night…Brawn and Blur picked up a very faint signal while they were patrolling in Greenland. They found a cargo container from Cybertron. It was almost completely inert. The packing jell was frozen solid. They brought it back to thaw out and returned to their survey….”

“It had,” Kim fumbled the unfamiliar word. “ _Scraplets_ in it?”

“They thawed out this morning. Ate their way out of the container.” His seat seemed to shiver under her. “I’d gone to town to get the kids so they could play with the sparklings. It’s a school holiday. They were there when, uh, you know.”

“Oh, no.”

“They were fine. They were great. Scraplets don’t really register humans as anything interesting. No metal. Slipstream and Chip managed to get the sparklings into the cat habitat and lock the door. Jack and Raf stood at the outer door with pipes or something. Pierre stood guard over Ratchet while he tried to fix the Bridge—he had a club of some kind. A cricket bat, whatever that is. Guarding him. The rest of us—the humans were great. They were great. Miko is the most fierce—” He shook again.

“Bulkhead, were you hurt?”

“Not bad. Not _bad_ , bad. They never made it through my armor. They like wires, when they can get them. And fuel lines. They can’t chew through a spark casing, but sometimes in smaller mecha they can get the power supply.”

“Scrap.”

The road hissed under his tires. “One got in my hip seam. Miko reached in and hauled it out. Like, she grabbed it and pulled it out. She had one of those raw-materials bars about a meter long. You know the ones? She smashed it…Scraplets aren’t tough, you know. They don’t have, like, real armor. They only win because there are so many of them….”

Kim reached out and patted his dash. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Ratchet followed protocol. Alien incursion, you know. Brought down the isolation doors and forcefields, shut down the vents. But they took out the Bridge. Pit, but they’re smart for drones. We couldn’t get any back-up in. There were dozens. It took about five hours to dig them all out. And then we had to reboot the bridge.”

Kim realized he had turned toward the city center, instead of taking Broadway toward the federal building whose empty parking structure they were using to cover Bridge transit. “Where are we going?”

“Nowhere. Anywhere. I’m just wasting time.”

“We need to get back.” Was he afraid to go back, after being locked in the base with…things?

“Hound wants to see you when you get in. But he’s not all the way put back together yet, and Ratchet thinks it’d be better if…they had a little more time.”

“ _Hound_?” Kim gasped.

“Scraplets bite.” Another shiver. “His armor’s not as thick as mine.”

For a moment, Kim couldn’t breathe. “How….bad?”

“Ratchet and Wheeljack can fix him. But they’ve still got him open and…Mirage is jacked in to help…with some system overrides. In a little while I’ll take you back.”

Kim had gone to a lot of Ratchet’s medical lectures. She kept her voice level. “What kind of overrides.”

“Electropulse fluctuations.”

“Spark distress.” It wasn’t a question.

“Uh. Yeah.”

“It’s…okay if we go back now. I’ve seen surgery before.”

“I got my orders.”

Kim gritted her teeth together. It took a moment before she could speak. “Okay. We’ll drive around for a bit. Yeah.” Kim folded her hands tightly and sat very still. “It’s, um, kind of cold. Can you--?”

The heat came one.

“Thanks.” Kim tried to remember who else was scheduled to be on base today. “Is Bee all right?”

“Oh, yeah. You know. Mostly. He’ll need some armor patches, when the medical team has time. I’m okay, really. I took the kids home. They sent me to get you to, you know, keep me busy.” He turned onto Westmoreland. There was a small park where the trees had been outlined in Christmas lights.

They drove in silence for a couple of blocks. The park gave way to a line of cute little restaurants with matching Christmas lights cascading down the front. Bulkhead said, “I think it’s nice, the way you take advantage of the darkness provided by the axial tilt to decorate with light. Having them when daylight extends later would not be nearly so satisfying.”

“Uh, yeah,” Kim agreed absently. “And Jack and Raf are okay?”

“Oh, yeah. As soon as we could Bridge in Dr. Nomura and drop the shields for Nurse Darby, we got them all checked out. Humans are lucky, though. They don’t have anything scraplets want, and they aren’t in their files as a threat.” His cab shook hard. “Jack had a pry bar. He was so fast, not as fast as a scraplett, but over and over, he just smashed—he got them off me. Pit—”

“Bulkhead, let’s get you out of the city so you can hit an open road and pick up some speed.”

“Oh, yeah. Speed would be great.”

“Bulkhead. We’re okay. Earth doesn’t have scraplets. This was a one-off. This nasty surprise—we won’t make that mistake again.”

A long pause. “They got here once.”

“And you fought them off. You totally did. Hey! How do you celebrate something like this? Total victory? Does Optimus give, like, medals or something? Because you and a small team heroically destroyed a terrible and implacable enemy. Total victory. If they’d gotten out of the base—” Kim shuddered herself, imagining small, mobile drones with teeth, replicating and swarming, learning to use Terran raw materials and adapting to Earth fuels. _Scrap_. What mecha considered a ‘drone’ was still a smart learning machine far beyond what anybody on Earth could make. “I mean, you guys are _heroes_.”

“Yeah. I guess we are.”

“Total bad asses. If you don’t get a medal from Optimus, I’ll talk to General Morshower. You saved our afts.”

“Accolades. Not objects, like your medals. We get… You add…a title to your name or the right to use a particular symbol when you’re glyphing. Or, when we’re formal, you wear the symbol on your armor. But I was a Wrecker. We take a…vow. The only title we take is ‘Wrecker.’ Nothing after that.”

“That’s really interesting. Nobody ever mentioned that.” She got him talking about the sorts of commando missions Wreckers went on. 

When they reached the freeway onramp, he opened up and accelerated to (roughly) ninety. After about an hour, he took exit marked ‘Brackney,’ and sighed. “We got the word to head back. I’m going to find someplace secluded enough to open a bridge.”

It took a few minutes. Even the ‘rural’ parts of New York State were packed. Bulkhead eventually selected a waste management facility and disabled its cameras before radioing base that they were ready. The pink swirling void of the hole in space looked almost like a large holiday decoration. Kim closed her eyes as they went through.

The infirmary was pretty quiet when they arrived. Ratchet was on one of the berths, passive and silent while Wheeljack did spot-welds with a knitting tool and Pierre smeared raw materials jell on the shallower gashes. Bee, already taped up and glistening with goo, was parked in alt in the corner. Mirage was looming over the second berth—that must be where Hound was.

Bulkhead let Kim out in the center of the medbay and then rolled backward to idle uncertainly at the yellow line. Optimus came around the table and lifted Kim gently. “Evening, beloved,” Kim said softly.

“Evening,” he agreed. “Perhaps not ‘good.’ Are you well?”

“Yes.” She was managing to keep her voice quiet and level. “How’s Hound?”

His answer was equally quiet. “His injuries are not life threatening, but very painful. There is sensor damage and some loss of backup memory. Fortunately, most of the parts required are in storage.”

Kim closed here eyes. “Okay. Okay. That’s…not too bad.”

“He is very anxious to speak to you, Kim. He has…” His vocalizer reset. “He has faith in very little. His human friends…are a great exception… it would be good for him to speak with you. But you must remain very calm, Kim.”

“Yeah. Calm. Okay.”

He carried her over, set her down lightly on the metal bracing of the berth. Kim managed not to gasp and squeal in horror. Half Hound’s face was gone, including his left eye. His mandible--she could see into his buccal cavity. _Sensor damage_. God. The helm was full of sensors. And back up memory.

Optimus had tried to warn her. Kim should have understood.

“Hey,” she said softly. “Wow. I. Am.” _Get it together_. “I am awed by how amazing you are. I couldn’t heal this. But this isn’t even a long term repair for you. You are so cool.”

Hound answered in Cybertronix without moving his face. Squatting down to be level with Kim and Hound, Mirage translated, “He will not have to grow the most complex parts from scratch. Ratchet has most of the sensors needed in inventory.”

“I’m so glad. I’ll thank him later. But Ratchet’s always on the ball, isn’t he?” Kim tried a slow breath, thinking it would be rude to look away or withdraw, but horrified by the wires showing under the missing face plating. And the empty cup where his optical sensor should be. Or the naked stems where three foldable antennae had been—ripped out? Bitten off? Kim gave up trying to breathe and forced her gaze to the remaining eye. It was dark, but whole, unharmed. “Oh, Hound.” She had not meant to say it aloud.

“He apologizes for not retrieving you on time.”

Her gaze slid to the missing optic again. The shallow, curved base had been cleaned out and filled like a large petri dish with golden fluid. A nanite bath. It shimmered. Kim realized she was taking too long to answer. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here. I shouldn’t have gone.” Too many of the humans had gone. When humans—specifically humans—had been needed, they had not been here. This was not the time to lament about that. Hound had terrible damage-- “H--How are you perceiving me right now?”

“His sensors are shut down,” Mirage said. “Prime and I are broadcasting our own data.”

“So no hugging, then,” Kim said. “You are spared the weird human custom.”

“He does not find the custom objectionable.” Mirage held out his servo, a sheaf of feathery multi-sensors sprouting suddenly from the palm.

“Kim,” Optimus said sharply. “Be _very_ gentle. That was designed for investigation of passive objects.”

She stretched her hand palm-down over the fronds, slowly coming closer until they brushed lightly against her skin. “This isn’t a hug,” she said. “But that’s me.”

Hound’s answer was in short bursts. She wished she could understand Cybertronix. It was a long moment before Mirage translated, “Thank you. I am supposed to reassure you. I honestly don’t know enough about human distress to do that.”

Kim pulled her hand back. “Shit. I had one job and it was to be calm, but my sweat is full of….” Kim didn’t even know. Cortisol? Adrenaline? “Sorry. Sorry.” _Stop apologizing_. “Don’t worry. I’m good. I’m really glad you’re going to be okay.” 

“He won’t try to do the redaction himself,” Mirage said softly.

“Redaction,” Kim breathed. “Right. Tidy up the memory.” Because trauma. Because the irregular wave form had not been caused by damage to the casing or support system, his damage was on his helm, far away from central power systems and the seat of his soul. His spark instability had been caused by the terror and pain of having the scraplet monsters try to chew his face off. _Slag_. Kim thrust her hand to cup around Mirage’s data collecting fronds. “Oh, Hound. Beloved friend. I am so sorry this happened to you. I’d offer to help if I could.”

“You could, in fact,” Mirage said. “Tomorrow I am scheduled for a diplomatic demonstration. It would be better if he were not left alone.”

Kim opened her mouth, shut it. “Mirage. I can’t broadcast sensor data to him.”

Kim couldn’t pick out the phonemes of Hound’s answer. It sounded like tinkling bells and paper fluttering in the wind. Mirage purred in response and said in English, “Sixty-three percent of his net is undamaged. We expect it to be rebooted by midnight. He will be able to see and hear you tomorrow.”

“Yes. Of course. Put it in the schedule.” There, at least, she was on solid ground. Letting someone else input a schedule change that affected you conveyed very good relations. It was always the right thing to say.

Optimus stepped back to the table. “Kim. Hound is agreeing to power down now. Say good-night and let him rest.”

“Good night, friend,’ Kim said obediently. “I’ll be in tomorrow. Good night, Mirage. Thank you.”

As they passed the yellow line, Bulkhead transformed and joined them. He produced Kim’s overnight bag from a subspace pocket and handed it across to her. “C _hikushō_ “ he said. “What a mess.” 

From the height of Prime’s hand, Kim didn’t quite know what to make of the chaos on the floor. Between the Bridge and the infirmary the…bits had been swept to the edge, but looking toward the assembly room the floor was strewn with chunks of metal and wires and tubes and data chips. Slipstream and four of the NEST troops were sweeping them up into piles. The railing along one side of the balcony was _bent_ and the little elevator was ripped off its guides. The newly refinished floor was discolored with splashes of coolant and lubricant.

“No one has died. For that I am grateful—” Optimus broke off and turned toward the tunnel. “Kim, I must put you down. If I am holding you during the coming discussion, it might be interpreted that I am hiding behind you.”

She could hear a golf cart in the tunnel now. It was the general, driving himself (he often didn’t) and speeding much faster than humans normally did.

“Oh, boy,” Bulkhead muttered.

Kim rolled her shoulders and tried to look invisible.

Optimus dropped to a crouch as the general—he was in jeans and an ‘ugly’ Christmas sweater, shit, he’d been at home, off duty today—got out of the cart. “Glen,” Optimus said softly. “I am sorry.”

“A personal apology isn’t going to be good enough, Prime. That’s twice in the last month there’s been—what the fuck were they anyway? Enemy combatants? Some kind of poodle-sized virus? I don’t even know—Let’s call it an ‘ _incursion’_ in my base! You know the sort of people I have to explain things to.”

“General, there have been no incursions into _your_ base. Both incidents were contained in ‘Bot country.”

“Don’t start weaseling—”

“I am not making excuses. I am pointing out that the embarrassment and very high costs of these incidents are born by my people, not yours. You bear no responsibility for my mistakes. I have already informed your superiors.”

“I’m responsible—”

“You are not.” Quiet. Completely unyielding.

A pause. “Damn it, Optimus.” The general took a deep breath. “How badly is Hound hurt?”

“He is out of danger and we expect a full recovery.”

“Well, thank God for that, at least.”

“I think we must thank the human allies who were here, in fact. Ratchet informs me they showed great courage and creativity in combating the scraplet pod.”

“Please don’t remind me about the civilian minors who were endangered just by being here.”

Optimus said nothing.

“The only saving grace we have, frankly, is that if humans had found this thing and thawed it out, they wouldn’t have had a clue what they were or how dangerous. Which is a significant point.” He sighed. “What is the chance there are more of these cargo pods full of metal-eating gremlins on my planet?”

“The cargo container was not capable of independent travel—”

“So they were being shipped somewhere?”

“No. I think we can assume that they were assaulting a vessel that crashed on Earth. Since the scouting party did not detect other remnants, I infer the vessel broke up in the atmosphere.”

“So pieces could be anywhere. Lovely.”

“Not anywhere. Those that crashed in salt water would have succumbed to corrosion. Any that landed in temperate areas would have been starved of resources and expired quickly. It was only the freezing temperatures that kept these units viable.”

The general rocked back and forth on his toes. “Do we know how old the crash was?”

“Estimates from the technology of the cargo unit and the ice layers at the retrieval site indicate four thousand years plus or minus two hundred and twelve.”

“So, we have to search Greenland.”

“Agreed. If any other pods were to become uncovered by diminishing ice pack and found by humans, the consequences could be disastrous. Even if none of the other remains contain scraplets.”

“How can we—”

Optimus lifted his hand and turned sharply to Bulkhead. “A moment, General. Bulkhead. Drop into alt immediately.”

“Oh,” Bulkhead said thickly. “Yeah. Scrap. That might help.” But he didn’t move. His optics were unfocused. And then he started to fall.

Somehow Optimus pirouetted around Kim and caught Bulkhead before he landed on the general, who was already jumping back, pulling Kim with him. “What’s wrong—” he demanded.

Kim could smell it now. Processed energon didn’t have a strong smell, but it was memorable. “He’s got a leak. He’s bleeding internally.”

Bulkhead was down, awkwardly on his back on the flat floor. Optimus was attaching a medical line. “He said one got in his hip joint,” Kim volunteered.

“Yes, I have found it. A damaged line has failed. The valve will not engage.”

The valve would not engage. He was leaking out.

Pedes thundered in the infirmary behind them and suddenly Wheeljack was shoving Optimus out of the way and shifting Bulkhead onto his side. “Prime, trigger the hip plate release.” Despite his swift movement, Wheeljack’s voice was even and calm. “You humans need to step back. You aren’t in hazard coverings.”

Kim normally had rubber gloves in her field bag. She had added them (and materials tape) to the notebook and pens and bottled water and tissues she had carried before. But she had left that bag in her room.

Wheeljack transformed two of his fingers into tiny instruments, popped off the tasset, and reached in. Energon flooded out over his fingers and poured down Bulkhead’s armor.

Optimus unshipped a second cable. This one was thicker and came from a slot in his waist. A life support line. Optimus snapped it into a port on Bulkhead’s fauld.

Ratchet, limping, thundered out of the infirmary, and he and Wheeljack began arguing in dissonant Cybertronix.

A leak was a standard repair. The energon distribution and power systems had all sorts of failsafes and backups. This should have been simple. Two doctors in the hall outside a well-supplied infirmary should have gotten him stable in a minute or too. Twenty minutes later, though, Bulkhead was still dripping energon on the floor when Optimus and Ratchet carried him to a medical berth.

Watching them go, it took Kim a minute to get her breath. Then she squared her shoulders and turned. “Okay, Glen? Want to learn how to clean up an energon spill?”

He pulled his gaze away from the infirmary and cleared his throat. “Can humans do that?”

“Yeah. They have this absorbent stuff. The energon sort of dries out and we can vacuum it up.”

“We don’t recycle it?”

“It’s been in use. They can’t….” Without meaning to, Kim remembered Optimus connecting his own power supply to Bulkhead. It was like starting CPR—except that, unlike CPR, it wasn’t a desperate step in the face of near-certain failure. Mech life-support was nearly perfect. Whatever had gone wrong, they would have time to fix it. Bulkhead wasn’t going to die. “They can’t do anything to clean it up or concentrate it now. Come on, I’ll show you where we keep the supplies.”

Kim couldn’t estimate how much energon was on the floor. Gallons, surely. It took half an hour to clean it up. The general didn’t mind using the shop vac. Perhaps he was glad to have something to do.

When they carried the buckets of powdery absorbent to the trash, they could see Ratchet and Wheeljack working over Bulkhead. It turned out the attacking scraplett hadn’t bitten through the line, only gotten it twisted and pinched. Bulkhead, running combat protocols even after the fight ended, had been diverting resources to pressurize the system below the snag rather than flag it for repair. The time he’d spent in alt had temporarily reduced the stress on his power system, but transforming had pushed his system back into high gear and the strain had torn the damaged fuel line laterally, jammed two primary valves, and decalibrated the secondary pump. 

Kim couldn’t follow the details. When they finished decontaminating the floor, she stood with the general, watching the spark monitor.

Ratchet spent an hour trying to stabilize Bulkhead enough to begin repairs before changing gears and stabilizing for stasis. Kim felt a wave of relief when she realized what he was doing: shut-down meant the patient could wait in complete safety for the days (or, in the worst cases, weeks or months) it took to do a through evaluation and prepare replacement parts.

“Is there anything else we can do?” The general asked softly.

Kim shook her head.

“Well. I have—Actually, quite a lot I need to do. Pass along my apologies to Optimus, but I don’t have time to continue this…discussion tonight.”

“He’ll appreciate that.”

“Tell him to get some rest.”

When Optimus came out of the infirmary a few minutes later, he scooped Kim up and continued on without pausing. Kim leaned hard against his thumb. “Mesa?” she asked.

“I’m sorry. No. I must refuel.”

They went to the ‘Bot commissary. This was still a mess. There were bits of…what did they even look like? _Teeth_ , Bulkhead had said. Slag! There were pieces everywhere.

Optimus swept the debris off the table with his free hand and set Kim down. The energon dispenser was a slightly different shape. Kim realized it had been replaced. Oh. The scraplets had gotten a tank of energon. Oh, damn.

Optimus returned with a large container—over seven gallons—of pinkish energon and a two gallon beaker of clear, synthetic fuel. He set them down next to Kim and sank onto the bench, sitting very erect.

Kim stepped to the edge. “Come a little closer?” she asked.

He leaned in so that she could rest a hand against his torso. It was good to be close. She had missed him. And today had been so horrible. “Oh. Beloved. You weren’t here?”

“I was in Siberia, making my best speed to the nearest air base that could handle a Condor cargo plane.”

Siberia! Geez! “What is your best speed?”

“On Siberian roads? Roughly one-hundred and sixty kilometers per hour. Not fast enough. I was still seventy kilometers out when they Bridge was repaired.”

“You need a wash?”

“Thank you. Perhaps tomorrow.”

Right. Okay. No wash. So where could she start? “Will you need to help the kids manage the memory of this?”

“No. For which I am grateful. They never realized the danger they were in. Dr. Chase—he herded them into Max’s chamber and…cuddled them. He told them stories and sang. He had a wooden cane, in case the perimeter was breached. He was prepared to defend the sparklings with a sliver of _tree_.”

“Damn.”

“I am so grateful to our human companions here. I am so grateful _for_ them.”

“We won’t be taken by surprise again, Optimus. You won’t have to fight them alone. Hey. I bet Lennox is pissed he missed this.”

“Let us hope he has no opportunities in the future.”

He had not touched the containers of shimmering liquid. “Should I step out of the way and let you refuel?” Kim asked.

“Soon. Not just yet?” It sounded like a request.

“Okay. Do you want to tell me about it?” It was a vague invitation. He could pretend not to understand.

“My energon levels have dropped below the point permitted for combat deployment. I must refuel. I must. But my cognition is caught in an illogical loop. We lost two-hundred and ninety-five point two liters of energon today. Every drop is so precious. What is held in that tumbler would bring a sparkling to term.”

“Damn.”

“It is a logic failure, a minor glitch,” he confessed.

Kim folded her arms, turned around, and leaned back against his bulk. “Well. That’s the good part about living in on the dead husk of Chaos—plenty of energon.”

“Your sense of humor is….frankly terrifying.”

“Our life is terrifying.” Kim turned back around and motioned him to pick her up. “It’s totally legitimate to be worried. I get it with my analog brain, so you have fabulous intersubjectivity about it. From every analysis, it’s…. “ she shook her head. “Everything sucks. Everybody worries about energon all the time. We’re finding it faster than it’s being used. So far. But every one of today’s injuries has an energon cost. And you have to eat anyway.” 

He had her against his chest now, directly beside the spark chamber. Another mech could have altered their field to comfort him. Kim had no conscious control over hers at all. Her state of mind determined her electromagnetics, not her will, and Kim was _upset_.

Could she be calm? She couldn’t be calm. What could she do? She should do something. She could love him. She could trust him. She could think about that. It might be something.

She could remember her astonished bafflement at being asked to explain the difference between a wig and a hat. What a wonderful question. How brilliant he was!

She could remember the trip patrolling Washington state, stopping for turtles and taking them to the side of the road. That day had started so well and it had gone to hell and he had been so brave and good.

_She could—_

_Click_. A series of almost-silent thumps. A capacitor switching to trickle-discharge. Kim took a deep breath, relaxing with him as combat protocols disengaged. “Everybody is going to be fine,” she whispered. “It’s okay.”

“We were fortunate,” he agreed softly.

“So…what about this little glitch? Do you redact that?”

“It is not so severe. I….” He stopped. Kim let the silence go for a minute, in case he was taking a call over the wifi. But he didn’t move.

“It’s okay. It’s been a rough day. Hey? Should I ask you to explain the semiotics of ‘flow’? Would thinking about that help?”

“Explaining the subtle meanings of ‘flow’ would be delightful. Some other time. Forgive me, Kim, I am….”

“Tired,” Kim suggested.

“Perhaps.”

“You know,” Kim said carefully, “that isn’t gestating a baby mech in that cup. It isn’t a potential spark the Matrix hasn’t created yet. It’s the safety of the two sparklings you have now. That is the fuel you need to protect them.”

A soft hum. “That has done it.”

“Well. Good. Okay.” It was a slow refueling. First the energon, and then the synthetic. Mecha didn’t swallow. Or sip. Or taste very much—or at all, since analysis wasn’t _taste_. But if his ratios were off, he would _feel_ better with more energon in the mix. Kim knew humans were not good at estimating volume, but it was hard not to notice the proportions of pure and artificial fuel he had selected. Kim very carefully did not mention it.

She waited, resting against him, as his complicated buccal cavity ingested first the energon and then the substitute that was so less efficient, produced a waste product, and could not nourish protomatter. She said nothing until he had put the empty containers away.

“I’m glad I’m home,” she said then. “I’m sorry I left. I missed you badly.”

“I am just as glad you missed the incident. Was your holiday acceptably warm and bright?”

“Oh, yes. A dozen at dinner, and I showed up gainfully employed with a very expensive ham. I’ve been in college for a long time. This was nice.” She leaned against him. There was schmutz on his windshield. “You’re kind of a mess,” she said.

“Sadly, I do not have time to wash. As attractive as that offer is. The repairs Ratchet made to the bridge are temporary. Quite soon, I will need to work on it.”

“Rats. Sorry.” She rolled her shoulders and tried to relax. “Should I be saying something?”

“Why?”

“Well, I’m not broadcasting a carrier wave, and…well….”

“In the current context, where we are not isolated and I am not in active distress, the intentionality of your overlapping is enough. The sensation is not strong, but the action itself is meaningful.”

They got to sit for a few minutes. Not as long as Kim wanted but long enough that she noticed she wouldn’t mind peeing. Then Optimus cursed in muted Cybertronix. “The Bridge is throwing error messages. I cannot delay any longer. And you should see to your people.”

Kim nodded briskly and leaned away. “Right. Got it. Give me a lift to the balcony?”

It was hard, climbing the steps and not looking back. But he had work to do. And Kim had responsibilities.

She found Pierre in the kitchen, shoveling in what looked like three packets of instant oatmeal. “I’ll fry you up an egg, if you want some real food,” she offered.

“Thanks, but I must rush back to the infirmary. Ratchet is using our shorthandedness as an excuse not to shut down himself and run internal repair cycles. You need to check on Chip, though. He’s in his room.”

Well, hell. Stopping by the fridge for a couple of bottles of water and a can of cherry fizz, she went back up the hall and knocked on his door.

“Fuck. What _is_ it? I swear to god, if we’re being invaded again—”

“It’s me!” Kim called quickly, cracking open the door. “Everything’s fine. I’ve brought water.”

“Yeah. Fine. Whatever.”

Tentatively, Kim entered. He was in bed. “How are you doing?”

“I’m taking some time off!” his tone was somewhere between announcement and demand.

“Yeah. Sure. I don’t know when the Bridge will be operational, but as soon as—”

“I’m not _going_ anywhere. I’m staying in bed and sleeping for three days. Or maybe a week. Don’t fucking ask me.”

“If you want—you can get to any doctor anywhere in the world—”

“No, I don’t need a doctor. Give me the water. And the soda. And go away.”

“Are you—"

“Go. Away.”

Kim went.

She checked on the children next. It felt quite late to Kim, but it with the time difference, it wasn’t even seven o’clock yet. 

Jack seemed to be surprisingly fine about the whole thing. Apparently, after you got used to giant metal aliens and an enemy ship invisibly in orbit, flying mechanical piranha were just another day. “ _I almost felt sorry for them. I mean, they were awful, but they didn’t fight back against us. Some of them didn’t even try to dodge. And they’ve got no armor to speak of. But mom says they weren’t alive. So_.”

“Oh. Hey, yeah. Can I speak to June?”

He handed the phone over very quickly, she must have been right there. “ _Kim? You’re back? How’s Hound_?”

“Stable. Um. Bulkhead went down. He’s in stasis. So. He’s okay.”

“ _Shit. Should I come in_?”

“No. Stay with Jack tonight. Maybe come in tomorrow if you can. Ratchet’s resting, and the most urgent issues are in the Ground Bridge right now. There isn’t anything you can do. You okay?”

“ _Oh. Sure. I’m wonderful. I thought it would be great, bring Jack into play with the babies and spend the day Christmas shopping in Los Vegas. A nice treat, right? I hadn’t been there an hour when I got a call…Oh, Kim. When I got there, I couldn’t get in. All the forcefields were up. I was parked outside the tunnel….”_

“Wow.” Kim wished she had something reassuring to say. Or wise. “Damn.” No, that wasn’t it.

Miko was next. She seemed to be doing great. She recounted the battle with the scraplets in gory detail (yipe), and bragged about her own kill-tally (forty-nine). She even had some video of the monsters, if Kim wanted to see sometime (a good idea, but it didn’t sound like fun). “Listen, Miko,” Kim said when she paused to breathe, “You coming in tomorrow?”

“ _No. I have homework. The foster parents are being all conscientious. It’s total drag_.”

Should Kim feel relieved? Another day to get Bulkhead back together before she saw him? Or was Kim just being cowardly, dishonest, and unfair?

Nope, she decided. Leave Miko at home. It wasn’t like she could do anything, or even talk to him. An extra day of ignorance wouldn’t hurt. “Better get busy then. Don’t want to get grounded.”

Raf didn’t answer his cell right away. His family didn’t know about the ‘Bots, and he had to be discrete. Kim didn’t push. He called her back before she’d finished boiling water for tea, though. “Hey, Kiddo? I just got back. You doing okay?”

“ _Oh. Well. Yeah_.” He said heavily.

“Did you get hurt?”

“ _No. I’m fine_.”

“I hear you had a rough day, though. Or a really exciting day. It depends on who I ask.”

“ _Kim. It was_.” He lowered his voice. “ _I know some things I shouldn’t. Impossible things. Sometimes sort of a lot of things. But—Kim, I didn’t know, I didn’t realize. How could I have no idea about this_?”

Ok. Well. Um. “Are you feeling bad that you didn’t recognize this danger? Or are you wondering what else you don’t know?”

“ _Um. Yes_?”

“Yeah. Right.” Kim sighed. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“ _Maybe? Do you know a lot about the absolute flow of the universe_?”

“Nope. But I’ll listen if you want to talk about it. Or if not me—Optimus can have seven conversations at once. Or…Charlotte. She understands your situation is…unusual. You aren’t” Well, she couldn’t say ‘you aren’t alone in this, but, of course he was the only one. He _was_ pretty alone. “Without friends,” she finished weakly.

He didn’t commit to talking to anybody. Kim would have given Hound or Bee a heads up, but both of them had had worse day than Raf. Well. He was okay for now. They didn’t have to fix it all now.

Exhausted from the very long day that had started three time zones away, Kim got to bed early and then was up again at six. She checked the schedule while brushing her teeth. Fixit and Maggie were back and at the bridge. Ratchet was resting but would be back on duty in two hours. Hound was in an offline repair cycle. Optimus at the Bridge, but was going off-duty in ten minutes.

Oh. 

Kim speedily rinsed and spit, ran a comb through her hair, snatched up her bathrobe, and scampered out to the assembly room. The floor was cold on her bare feet. The steps were cool through her thin cotton sleep shorts when she sat down at the bottom.

Optimus, coming around the corner, paused when he saw her, then came closer before speaking. “According to the schedule, you are off duty. This is within your weekend sleep cycle.” 

“That’s more of a goal, you know…. Humans don’t have direct control over sleeping functions.”

“I am aware. Errors in the sleep cycle can have serious health consequences.”

Kim snorted. “Getting up early on a Saturday isn’t going to hurt me. So? Off duty?”

“I am. And I am filthy.”

“Oh. Well. Let’s work on that.”

He scooped her up very gently, instead of holding out a hand for her to board. Kim frowned, wondering about his state of mind and how to ask about it. “What music were you listening to on your free channel?”

“Carly Simon.”

Kim winced, trying to recall the repertoire. “Little depressing? You know, Jewel might be a better choice. Or Alanis. Or you could watch nature documentaries.”

“I enjoy nature documentaries. I also enjoy many human bards. Few capture the tragedy of human isolation so vividly.” A pause. “I was trying to remind myself to have sympathy for the individuals who were reading out the riot act over the scraplet infestation.”

“While fixing the bridge. Crappy night,” Kim said sympathetically. His impossibly long strides had already carried them to the washracks. No one else was there, which Kim found a relief.

He set her down delicately and settled into a crouch. “I noticed a secondary theme of gendered ambivalence to committed relationships.”

Kim took a step back and tilted her head up to look at him. “Gendered ambivalence…to committed relationships.”

“I did. I wondered about the validity of her observations. It occurs to me you might have a resonant experience.”

Kim almost laughed. “If *I* might resonate? With gendered ambivalence? Your gender makes you mom to about a third of your species and potentially requires very intimate file-sharing with any—or every—First of Line regardless of whether you want to. My gendered ambivalence isn’t on the scale.”

“The Matrix is a blessing,” he murmured. “It blesses me no less than everyone else. Passing data packets is not necessarily in intimate experience.”

Kim sighed. “Put Carly Simon on the speakers for me, then.” She retrieved a long handled brush and a bottle of dish soap and got started. Optimus was a mess. Surely, Siberia was snowy this time of year. But there were bits of dead plant and small rocks in his wheel wells. Had he gone cross-country?

Kim didn’t rush the wash. Sometimes they paused a song to talk about a particular line or metaphor. Sometimes Kim asked him to partially transform so she could wipe out a seam with a shop towel.

She got wet, of course. Kim ignored the soapy shorts clinging nastily and didn’t rush. The hiss of water. The slightly depressing yacht-rock in the background. The scrapes and creeks of shifting mech.

The song that began, “I have no need of half of anything,” came on. Kim nodded to herself. “That one, Beloved.”

“Ah,” he said.

“Stretch out your servos for me…yeah, relax the seams. What is this, bits of broken rock? How bad was Siberia?”

“Wood. I was reckless in my hurry. I attempted a shortcut.”

“Oh, love,” Kim said sadly. She could imagine his panic.

“They did not need to be rescued. They managed to save themselves. Under analysis, it is clear I underestimated the humans.”

“To be fair, I didn’t expect Jack and Miko to be monster-killing bad-asses either. Oh. Did Raf speak to you since last night?”

“He did not. Why?”

“He feels really bad that he didn’t understand the threat the scraplet things were.”

“Ah. I see. I will assign Jazz to check in with him regularly until Bumblebee is fully cleared for duty.”

“How long is Bee down?”

“Limited duty in one point three orns.” That wasn’t too bad. Kim guessed Bulkhead and Hound would be in the infirmary for more than a week.

Satisfied Optimus was free of Siberian muck, Kim took a squeegee and an alien microfiber towel and began drying him off. He was large, and the process wasn’t quick. By the time she was done, her clothing wasn’t dripping anymore, but she was damp and chilly.

“Turn the sprinkle-hose on form me and raise the temperature about five degrees?” she asked, stripping and tossing the sodden t-shirt and shorts aside.

“Fahrenheit, I assume?” he asked.

The water started up again, and Kim braced the nozzle on a ladder and ducked into the stream. To wash. In front of someone else.

For a moment her heart pounded. It wasn’t just the intimacy, she wasn’t sure if this quite counted as reciprocal. It wasn’t like she needed help to wash. Unlike mecha, humans didn’t have an armless alt form.

“You are nervous,” he murmured, rolling slightly closer, stopping just at the edge of the spattering warm water. “Uncovering flesh signals informality and trust. Are you worried about how I will respond to this message?”

“I’m worried I’m being insultingly awkward about it. This is normal for you. Just washing.”

“And it is delicate, communicating companionship with gestures that would signal a mating invitation in some human contexts.”

Kim turned and let the water run down her back. “You are _very_ attractive when you analyze my culture.”

“I have noticed that you think so,” he conceded. He was close enough now that a few of the drops were spattering his tires. “You are responsible for understanding so much. Perhaps sharing the burden is a source of joy.”

“You do something cool…beautifully. It’s a source of joy.”

He rocked back slightly and then sank down so his chassis was a few inches lower. “The trope of powerful extraterrestrials intent on abducting and molesting human women is…inconvenient.”

Kim snorted. “Believe me, if we were compatible, I’d be fine with that.”

“That’s probably very flattering,” he said uncertainly.

Kim, now warm and soap-free, stepped out of the water so she was directly in front of him. “Any terms, Beloved.”

“I can’t…quite return that.”

“I know. It’s okay. I’m not going to ask—” Kim tipped her head back and looked into the distant dimness of the cavern ceiling. She could not ask him to choose staying with her over ending the war. It was hard, in moments like these, to remember _why_ —what difference would anything make, what point would there be to anything if he were gone? But she had managed so far to hold herself back from that betrayal. “It’s okay.”

“You are losing heat.” He transformed and retrieved her robe from the pile of packing crates where she had left it out of range with the water.

Like most of the clothing she’d bought since arriving in Jasper, the robe was in bright, primary colors. She popped it over her head and zipped it up. “Thank you—”

Optimus turned sharply back toward the entry. “Our presence is requested in the infirmary.”

“Okay.” Kim held up her arms so she could be scooped efficiently. “What’s wrong?”

With quick steps that resounded off the cavern walls but didn’t jar Kim at all, they were already half-way to the door. “Wheeljack has brought Miko to the base.”

Kim blinked. “Is Bulkhead awake?”

“No. He is still in stasis. Miko is not taking it well.”

Miko was not, indeed, taking it well. She was standing on Bulkhead’s berth, shouting in turn at Bulkhead, Wheeljack, and Ratchet. Most of it was in English. All of it was terrible. Her rage and pain tore at Kim’s heart. 

Also, Kim wanted to slap her.

The two conscious Autobots also seemed completely baffled about what to do. Ratchet was standing on the far side of Bulkhead’s berth with all his antennae out. Wheeljack had all his antenna in, and his armor seams were pulled tight. Neither were attempting to answer her.

At Optimus’ arrival, Ratchet retreated completely, transforming and heading for the Bridge tunnel. Wheeljack started to transform, aborted the motion, and lowered his head and shoulders in a human posture of subordination or repentance.

Optimus approached Miko closely enough that she could have touched him if she wished. It was a mech gesture she didn’t recognize. She only turned her wrath on him. “You told me to go home! You told me it was over! _I left him_. You made me _leave him_! If I had been here--”

“Miko, that is enough.” His voice was very quiet. Miko’s rant turned into inarticulate sobs.

Kim wasn’t carrying her bag. She didn’t have any tissues. She said, “Wheeljack, get her a clean shop towel.”

In his enthusiasm, the handkerchief substitute he produced was the size of a twin bed sheet, but Miko clutched it and buried her face.

Optimus said, “Wheeljack, have you explained the treatment plan and prognosis?”

“Before we arrived,” he said meekly. “I think she doesn’t understand—”

Miko lifted her head and shrieked, “He’s in a coma! You turned him _off_ , so he can’t fight—” the rest of it was lost in enraged Japanese.

Optimus set Kim on the berth and murmured, “She is a _human_. Can you—?"

Kim ignored Miko and said loudly to Wheeljack, “How many parts have to be fabricated before he can be fixed?”

“Fortunately, only the one, but the machine won’t be free until this afternoon. And he isn’t completely shut down. Repair systems are running again, on external power.”

Miko was grinding her teeth, but she seemed to be listening.

“What would happen if we woke him up and he and Miko talked. Can you wake him up? Is there any problem with cognitive functions?” Kim thought she knew the answer, but Miko needed to hear it.

It was Optimus who answered. “Waking him would be unkind. His primary power system has failed. The energon delivery network is malfunctioning. The external power support is probably robust enough to remain stable even if we increased the demands on it by rebooting him, but awareness of his generalized deprivation will be extremely distressing.” λλλλ, then. Energon stagnation. Lack of flow. A suffering that the Autobots said wasn’t _pain_ , but was every bit as bad. Worse, because you couldn’t completely end it by shutting down a nerve; the distress in protomatter and spark would propagate even if no sensation was transmitted to cognitive processors. Not starving, not drowning, not choking, not dying of thirst in the desert, not falling from great height. Nothing a human could imagine, only desperate and panicked and terrible.

Miko had subsided to a shaking. Through her teeth she said, “Repair systems work better when they aren’t offline.”

“Some of them. For some injuries,” Optimus said firmly. “Not this situation. When we have performed manual repairs, replaced the damaged parts, and established functionality in his power system, Bulkhead’s cognition and protomatter will be reactivated.”

Kim said, “He’s not dying. Miko? He’s not dying, he’s waiting. I get that it’s hard to see him like this, but he doesn’t need to be awake, aware that there isn’t enough energon flow—”

“ _You_ can shut up now,” Miko snapped. “You knew last night. You knew, and you kept it from me.”

Wheeljack slowly transformed himself through his alt form into a flat-topped, almost-pyramid. Was this shame or apology? Or just heartbreak for Miko’s misery?

“Miko,” Optimus said. “The infirmary is not the place to air disagreements. Important work needs to be done. Bulkhead is not the only patient. Please desist.”

Miko turned her back to them, draped herself along Bulkhead’s hip, and closed her eyes.

“You will be permitted to stay only so long as you do not disturb the staff and other patients. Is this understood?” Optimus told her.

She nodded without looking at them.

“I’m sorry, Miko,” Kim said.

There was no answer to that. 

“Wheeljack—” Optimus began.

Wheeljack transformed back into root form in something less than two seconds. “I should have made sure she understood before I brought her. But I’m not apologizing for bringing her.”

“I did not expect you to. I do expect you to stop discussing it here.”

Wheeljack stood very still for a moment, then spun and stalked to the far side of the infirmary to fuss with some of the equipment.

Kim made a face. Optimus offered her a hand. Kim waited until they were nearly to yellow line to ask, “Does he just not understand that Miko is a kid?”

“Perhaps not. He understands that Miko is f온입니c d. I understand why his decision tree prioritized that. My sympathy does not make the outcome less unfortunate.”

Kim sighed. “I need to eat something and get properly dressed,” she said. “I have to be back at ten. Is Hound--”

“Currently in a dormant repair cycle,” Optimus said.

Good. That was good. He needed to rest. He might still be out when Kim came back to fill in for Mirage. That would be good, because Kim wasn’t sure what she’d say to someone who had huge chunks of their face missing. And couldn’t manage English. And was nearly half blind-and-deaf-and-numb to all the other sensory input his helm gear had taken in. 

Okay. Right. It was probably better not to panic in advance. He was still Hound. 

~tbc

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, everyone, for the comments. They're lovely. I'm sorry for not responding. It's been a difficult year and I don't quite trust myself with free-range interacting. But I appreciate you hanging in there, this has been a very long story. Very, very long....


	6. Beside, apart, with

Maggie was in the kitchen, looking unusually faded and sluggish. “Time change from Australia?” Kim asked.

“I don’t know how the NEST teams do it, all over the and globe back at least once a week!”

“I think they mostly ignore local time.”

“I honestly don’t think there’s enough coffee in the world.”

“Did you get to have any fun at all before the recall order came?”

“Oh, yeah. It was great.” She yawned. “Fixit likes hiking.”

Kim filled three bowls with yogurt, granola, and frozen blueberries and delivered one of them to Chip. He thanked her grumpily and sent her away. According to the schedule Carly and Bobby would be home tonight; they had (separately) gone to see family. Pierre was showing off-duty until three. June would be in tomorrow.

With the humans accounted for, Kim dressed (oh, damn, her night clothes were in a soggy heap near the wash rack. Well. There wasn’t time to get them now), Kim collected her bag and headed back down to the infirmary.

When she arrived at nine-forty five, Miko was still curled up on Bulkhead, Ratchet and Bumblebee were parked in the corner running internals repairs, and the situation at Hound’s berth was even worse than she’d feared.

Mirage was cradling Hound’s helm in his servos while Fixit—who had produced a whip-like probe from one of his fingers—poked at the open cavities left by the excised sensors. As Kim timidly approached—there had been no one to ask at the yellow line if she had entry—Hound flinched and whimpered. Mirage crooned melodically in response.

Kim squared her shoulders. Helm wounds were worse than the usual armor gashes. And it was always harder when it was a close friend. But she’d done this before.

And… Mirage was still here. Maybe he wasn’t going after all. Maybe--

That dim hope evaporated as Fixit retracted his probe and said, “Enough for now. We will finish when you return.”

Kim stepped up and called, “Hey.”

“Kim, bring up a jar of the C-S-G when you come, please.”

“Sure thing.” She detoured to the human-sized cabinets to retrieve the copper-silver-gold raw materials jell that supported wiring self-repair. 

Mirage bowed slightly to Kim as he left. Kim waved, feeling a little guilty. She hadn’t gotten to know Mirage very well. He was, even by mech standards, exceptionally cool: a famous performer, a courtesan, an arbiter of taste, and—most recently—a ruthless spy. And also an active Wrecker. Wreckers generally were not as interested in humans as most of the other mecha. Perhaps they weren’t as lonely. Or perhaps they felt themselves above the personal concerns of squishy aliens.

That was not entirely fair, of course. Bulkhead and Wheeljack were exceptions. Well. Bulkhead had left the Wreckers some time back to enter Prime’s service, and the only human Wheeljack thought was interesting was Miko. But that was something. And Springer had very good relations with one of the geologists and was pursuing Arcee openly enough that even the humans noticed. But compared to the other bots, who were huge fans of human media, played video games and raced model cars with NEST crews on their off time, and manipulated their patrol assignments to get their photos taken by Google Earth near human landmarks, the Wreckers were pretty stand-offish.

Kim mounted the ladder to Hound’s berth and handed Fixit the jar. “Hey,” she said. She wished she had better material.

Kim’s phone buzzed. The greeting was in glyphs _. Apology:: Gratitude:: The Quality of Molecular Slowness._ Kim frowned. “Fixit, is he cold?” Standard lubricants were rated for negative twenty, weren’t they? He shouldn’t feel subjectively cold in the infirmary which never dropped below seventy-three.

“Cold?” He paused. “Oh. He is not cold. He is embarrassed. It is a metaphor.”

A chirp of agreement, very quiet. Kim started to reach for Hound—and stopped. “Um, where do I stand? Is he okay to be touched?”

Fixit turned his head. His optical lens focused on her slowly. “Hound is not currently able to speak English. He still understands it. Stand to his left. He is having some trouble coordinating primary optical data, but infrared is functioning normally.”

“Thanks,” Kim whispered. Trouble coordinating primary optical data meant ‘mostly blind.’ “Okay. Sorry.” Carefully, she stepped around to the tiny, shiny, black node under Hound’s intact jaw: an infrared sensor normally focused downward to track humans on the floor. She laid her hand next to the lens—as her warmth created a heat differential it would lightly ‘fuzz’ the input, a sensation of human presence. “Sorry, sweetheart. Tell me about this quality of molecular slowness. What is embarrassed about?”

The answer came as an English text message. YOU ARE FRIGHTENED OF INJURIES. RATCHET WAS CORRECT. YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN KEPT AWAY.

“I’m upset,” she admitted. “I’m scared. And if you’ve changed your mind about having me here, Slipstream owes me a favor--.”

He said something with request-tags in Cybertronix, but Fixit continued applying drops of raw materials jell to the exposed sensor sockets. Hound repeated himself, and Fixit sighed. “Your fear confuses him. _Fear_ is inappropriate. He is in no danger of either extinguishment or permanent malfunction. He is…enduring physical discomfort. Some internal repairs are needed to the sensor system before Ratchet begins replacing the missing components tomorrow. To do these repairs quickly and correctly, the systems must be monitored in real time.” It was one of the nastier parts of the war, Kim knew. To speed recovery, cognitive functions were kept online to direct repair systems that, under normal conditions, would have been set to automatic and left to repair automatically but slowly.

“He…really is going to be okay?” She had not meant that to be a question. Her eyes went to the missing cheek plating and torn jaw. She could see _into_ his buccal cavity. It was crowded with…small…shapes…coils…and triangles….

It was interesting. Of course, aliens would look different. It was just interesting.

“He will be,” Fixit said. “The sensors and armor will be replaced. We have enough resources and time that the damaged protoform elements will heal. The traumatic memories of this incident will be redacted into a descriptive file. The future is not the issue. The present is.”

“Okay,” Kim said meekly. “How do I help?”

“Monitoring damaged sensors is unpleasant. The silence of missing data is worse. Occupy his functioning sensors.”

“Well, I sing badly enough that that should be a spectacular distraction.”

Her phone screen filled with humor glyphs, and then blanked. A circle. Change of subject, and one serious enough to need a marker. Then, in English, I DID NOT REDACT MY MEMORIES OF THE CRASH OR MY RESCUE. I WILL NOT. FOR AS LONG AS MY SPARK PROPAGATES A WAVE, I WILL NOT FORGET THE MERCY OF HUMANS FOR AN ALIEN STRANGER.

That’s what he wanted to talk about? Now? Scrap. “It was a miracle,” Kim said. “Getting anyone out of that crash alive, and then the Deceptions came---”

NOT A MIRACLE. COSMOS SAVED US. He shifted restlessly. HE NEEDS SO MANY PARTS.

“He’s safe. He’s in stasis. That’s a mercy humans don’t have.” A mercy Hound didn’t have at the moment. Kim not being awkward would be merciful, too. “We’ll get him back.”

I AM NOT UNGRATEFUL. A pause. I WISH YOU COULD MEET HIM.

“Well, yeah. A space ship! Totally cool.”

YES. COOL.

“Will he like Earth, do you think? I guess he’s seen lots of planets.”

HIS MODS FOR INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL ARE BASIC. HE WAS BUILT AS AN IN-SYSTEM PASSENGER FERRY. HE HAS LANDED ON FEW PLANETS. EARTH WILL BE A SURPRISE.

Kim thought about that. “Yeah….”

HE WILL LIKE EARTH AS MUCH AS I DO.

“Well….maybe. You don’t talk much about other planets. Ratchet says Earth is the worst.” Kim frowned. “I’m in the wrong place, aren’t I? Where should I sit for overlapping?”

A soft clicking: amusement. EVEN IN FULL HEALTH I DO NOT THINK I COULD MAKE MY FIELD PERCEPTABLE TO YOU. THE PRIME HIMSELF CAN BARELY MANAGE IT. BUT YOUR ASSUMPTION THAT I COULD IS FLATTERING.

“Well of course I couldn’t _feel_ it,” Kim protested, embarassed. “I know humans are like, blind and pathetic! But it’s what mecha do when they’re close, and I can’t hold your hand!”

Fixit popped the raw materials jell into a subspace pocket and lightly touched Kim’s shoulder with his servo. “You already within his field. He is perceiving your electromagnetics with his spark, not his sensors.”

“Oh. Right. So, I’m being really stupid.”

“Yes. However, it is not your fault.” He patted her softly. Fixit was one of the most generous souls Kim knew. “I apologize for my eariler impatience. I had concluded you were stubbornly insisting on human interaction patterns at a particularly inopportune time. That was my error. Your understanding of how mecha perceive and process information is too superficial for you to adapt to deficiencies or deduce the correct behavior. I will work on judging humans more generously.”

Kim laughed once, a squawk of hopeless shame. Really, she had thought her understanding of mech perception was…pretty good. Maybe not perfect.

She would not make a fuss about it now; that would completely make this about _her_ , and Hound was still lying there with half his face removed. She swallowed hard. “I love you, Fixit. I love you Hound.” Damn, that was another “human interaction pattern.” Mecha didn’t normally need to have that in words. It wasn’t something they ever bothered to say, unless they were talking to someone very far away. “I’m sorry I’m being so useless. Tell me specifically what to do.”

Fixit leaned in, lowered his voice. “Hound needs to refuel. If you will be disturbed, you should look away and continue your conversation about space travel.”

“I see mecha refuel almost every day. Why would I—His face is a mess. Are you going to put in a drip line?” But that wasn’t hard to watch. Kim had seen Fixit himself hooked to a drip line. She had watched him pop it out.

“No. Additional raw materials will be useful. The intake system is functional.” He paused. “Its functionality will be fully visible.”

Kim’s phone wrote out WE ARE FORBIDDEN TO SHOW HUMANS THE INSIDE OF OUR BUCCAL CAVITIES. HUMANS HAVE AN INSTICTIVE FEAR OF COMPOUND MOUTHS.

 _We do?_ Kim looked from one to the other.

Fixit nodded. “We have seen video of the Xenomorph.” Oh. O-oh. Well, maybe. Kim was not sure it was necessarily an instinct. She did not have time to argue the point, though, because Fixit was still speaking. “Hound can refuel, but he cannot conceal the process if you look toward him.” He paused. “A delay of a few hours would not be too great a strain. Perhaps—”

“Oh, come on. Your mouth isn’t going to freak me out. I’ve seen it before, anyway. I think Blur showed me. He wasn’t supposed to.” Firmly, Kim stood up and shifted to Hound’s shoulder until she had a clear view. “Just tell me he isn’t in pain, and I’m cool.”

FUNCTIONAL AND WITHOUT PAIN. Hound said.

“Okay then.”

Fixit produced a small beaker of shiny, green beads. It was energon in a medical-grade raw-materials membrane.

Kim turned sideways and looked out toward the berth where Bulkhead lay running repair programs. Miko was still there.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Hound opening his mouth his mouth and Fixit very gently placing something inside. Slowly, Kim turned her head. There was quite a lot of…movement within the open gash. 

IT IS AGAINST POLICY FOR YOU TO LOOK. Her phone said.

Kim dropped her gaze. She cleared her throat. “Do you mind, though? Me seeing?”

THE POLICY IS

EXCESSIVELY CAUTIOUS

“I think so too,” Kim said. “Let’s break some rules.” She glanced at Fixit. He could put a stop to this right now if he felt like it. Instead, he selected another of the shiny beads and introduced it through the opening.

Inside Hound’s face, several small spirals uncoiled into short filaments, snared the energon goodie, and pushed it against a tiny pyramid—

The pyramid—it was no larger than the tip of a magic marker—split open like a beak, tore the green membrane and then three more of the tiny pyramids opened, revealing clusters of hair-like tubes that slurped up the spilling energon in less than second. The green shell…vanished, Kim didn’t see where to.

“Wow!” Kim said. “I had no idea!”

YOU WERE NOT MEANT TO. IT IS IN THE ORIENTATION PACKET.

Kim clicked softly. “Well….yeah. I can see that maybe this isn’t the _first_ thing we should know about you guys.”

Carefully, Hound opened his mouth again and Fixit deposited another bite. Again, Kim watched him neatly demolish it. “There are sensors that analyze the energon and….other stuff, right?”

Fixit pointed. “Here.” It looked like a miniature, grey pencil eraser. “You can touch it.”

“No, ew, I’m not poking anybody in the mouth in the middle of a meal.”

Soft clicks of laughter from both of them. She was being a silly human again? How could this not be appallingly personal? “Well…okay. Are you sure?” She grappled for an excuse. “I mean, all the energon is gone…right?”

Fixit looked indignant. “Inefficiency in a refueling system would never be tolerated.”

Slowly, Hound opened wide. His buccal cavity was about the size of a shoe box. Roomy.

Oh. Well. Right. Kim extended a finger. She firmly did not think about putting her hand into someone else’s mouth. This was just…ethnography. Learning about a physical structure Ratchet had never mentioned in class. Or….two friends getting to know their differences. Hound might want to put a camera in Kim’s mouth later.

She would have to let him, if he asked. Fair was fair.

She would darn well brush and floss before opening up for any cameras.

And then she was running a single finger along the ridge of a closed beak. It was hard and sharp and slick and dry. Hound shifted, opened wider. There was a bigger beak a bit down the ‘throat.’

The tiny filaments reached up and squirmed against her hand. They weren’t long enough to twine around her fingers, but they tugged and pushed insistently, dragging one of her fingers over the sensor.

The sensor was soft. “This is differentiated protomatter,” Kim breathed.

“Almost every component, yes,” Fixit said. “Protoform parts are quite different from armor.”

She started to pull her hand back. The tiny threads somehow tugged and pulled against her. Well. She was not going to jerk her hand away. “So…how do I taste?” She didn’t sound nervous at all.

HAZARDOUS. THERE ARE THREE CHEMICAL COMPUNDS THAT WOULD BE HIGHLY TOXIC IF INGESTED.

Fixit tisked. “Your sensitivity is set too low. Humans contain forty-three substances that would be toxic if consumed.”

Around the deeper, larger beak a ring of…they looked a little like short linguini. As she watched, they uncoiled and wiggled. “Are we seriously having the conversation where aliens explain why they won’t eat me?” Kim wondered if that was funny.

There was a pause. Fixit looked away. “The sparklings have been going on about how humans and mecha both take in fuel and materials. They are obsessed with the similarities and differences. Everyone is finding it disturbing.”

IT IS THE HOLIDAYS.

“What?” Kim said. The stubby linguini tongues were standing straight up now.

THE TWO FOOD CELEBRATIONS. Kim shook her head. THE SURCROSE HOLIDAY AND THE SACRIFICE OF THE UNPARDONED BIRDS.

Halloween and Thanksgiving.

AND FOR A WHILE, FIXIT WAS EGGING THEM ON BY DISCUSSING HIS FOOD RESEARCH.

“I have apologized for that,” Fixit said defensively. “Enough playing with Kim’s servo. You must finish the portion.”

“Why are those at the back standing up?” Kim began to ease her hand back.

A REFLEX. EXPULSION OF TOXIC MATERIAL. DO NOT PERCIEVE IT AS REJECTION. IT IS AN AUTOMATED SYSTEM.

Kim’s fingertips seemed to tingle a little as she pulled them back. She took a step away and leaned into Hound’s shoulder. She tried to look calm and encouraging as—one at a time—Fixit fed the compound maw bites of energon.

It was a slow process, but refueling generally wasn’t _fast_.

Casually, Kim sent Fixit a text request for Hound’s telemetry. The spark graph, of course, was two complex to read, but the variance was under three percent, so although he showing some stress, he wasn’t in trouble.

Kim rubbed her hands together to work up some heat and reached a little closer to the infrared sensor.

THIS WAS WHY I WANTED YOU. NOT BECAUSE YOU UNDERSTAND. BECAUSE YOU WILL COME TRY WHEN YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND. MERCY RATHER THAN VOID.

Kim firmly patted his shoulder armor. He would only detect the vibration, bit it was something. “It’s my job to understand. And when you feel better, we are going to have long talks where you explain lots of things.” She frowned. Hesitated for a moment. Climbed up onto his chest plating. “You know what? I can’t feel whatever is going on consciously, but humans—when a mech they love is hurt, this is where humans go. They get as close as they can to the spark chamber. I’ve seen both Mearing and Raf climb onto Bee this way. Miko seems to be asleep on Bulkhead right now. When Ironhide was getting his nanite transplants, this is where Bobby sat on all of his breaks.” Where was the right spot? There were shallow gouges in his paint job, but they wouldn’t be sore—armor wasn’t wired for pain. Kim ran a hand lightly over the roughened metal, found a spot just below the cervical plating that seemed to be right, scooted over it, and sat tailor-style. “You don’t have to do anything. We’ll just be here.”

Fixit continued the refueling. There were five more beads to go. Each was neatly popped and the life-giving fluid slurped away. It was a breathtakingly elegant system.

Kim got a video message. She tapped it open—

Oh.

That was what a scraplet looked like. Jaws and teeth with legs and curved wings like a beetle. “Slag,” Kim breathed. It was a rear-camera view. The thing was chasing after the camera. And then there were a bunch of them. “They look… so small.”

“A scraplet masses less than Max,” Fixit said. “They have a much higher density, of course.”

The video ended in a leap and a flash of teeth.

“Wait. _Humans_ fight those things? Humans?”

HUMANS WITH IMPROVISED WEAPONS AND NO TRAINING.

“Dang. Just… oh, man.” Don’t keep going on about how horrible the monsters that tried to eat him were. Kim ran her finger along a deep scrape. “Should I be jelling you?” she asked.

“We are concentrating on the internal damage first. In a few days, you may work on his exterior.” 

Ratchet came over then. He was still listed as “off duty,” and Kim briefly considered ratting him out. But she needed his goodwill, and he would do what he wanted anyway, so she didn’t open her phone but only scooted out of the way as he popped a line into one of Hound’s medical ports and got to work.

***

After a long, miserable weekend, Monday morning was nearly normal. The resident humans crowded into the kitchen for breakfast, darting around each other for cups or counter space or the stove. Dr. Nomura made tidy portions of scrambled eggs for everyone. Maggie sliced up a melon. Carly unpacked some left-over stuffing and offered it around, but it wasn’t popular at breakfast.

Even Chip had emerged from his cave to pick at coffee and eggs. He was stiff and unsmiling. And pale. Kim wondered where the line was and if she should be pressuring him to go see a doctor. “So….” She began. And regrated it, because she had no follow-up. “Taking another day?”

“I’m taking the kids up to the mesa later and explaining Christmas again.” That did warrant a brief, wry smile.

“They can wait.” Kim lowered her voice. “If you need more time—”

“I haven’t seen the sun since last week.”

“Yeah. Good point. Good point. But the kids—you’ve already had this conversation twice. I’ve had it once. Mearing started it and she _invented_ explaining weird Earth shit to ‘Bots.”

“If I can do this, I’ll legitimately be the best linguist in the world. Well. Most accomplished linguist.” It was a joke—and it was funny—and it was cleverly layered in poignancy, because the US government would not relent and let Optimus hire the best linguist in the world, and that sucked—but the smile didn’t quite reach Chip’s eyes.

“Okay,” Kim said. “Compelling argument. Counterpoint though: You now make an absurd amount of money and you aren’t paying for rent or utilities, so you could afford a weekend at a fancy spa anywhere in the world.”

His jaw dropped open. “I could,” he whispered. “Have you done it?”

“No,” Kim said. “I’ll get around to it.”

“I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“Research project, then.”

Kim had to hurry off. Fowler had called an early meeting about the scraplets. Now that they’d been found on Earth, he’d been put in charge of ensuring 1) that humans wouldn’t find any more, 2) that if humans did find some, they didn’t revive, reverse engineer, or identify them as alien, and 3) make sure that two hadn’t already happened somewhere.

It would have been a disturbing meeting, but Fowler was an old hand at digging into human secrets and lying about alien invaders. His questions were spare and precise. The answers Optimus and Arcee gave were technical but clear. 

She made it back in time to catch most of Bulkhead’s surgery. A new regulator core for his secondary energon pump had been molecularly grown in Ratchet’s parts incubator. The mechanism was smaller than one of Kim’s fingernails and delicately lacy-looking.

Installing it involved opening Bulkhead up so deeply that the human scrub team had to wear masks so the condensation of their breath wouldn’t introduce moisture into the power system. Kim stayed on the shelf, well out of the way.

The surgery itself was only the beginning of the recovery. Ratchet had replaced the worst of the damaged lines and valves on Sunday; a slow, tedious job that Kim had also watched from the shelf, holding Miko’s hand. That had been awful, actually. The kid had cried twice and cursed Kim out once, although she kept it together enough not to try to climb down (which would have led to her immediate removal from the infirmary). 

At least Miko wasn’t here today. Yet. By the time school was out, Bulkhead should be awake. That might be a good thing.

In the good times, before the war, the standard practice was to keep cognitive processors offline during big self-repairs. There had been externals, then, to direct the nanite repair colonies. Even without central direction, nanites could repair almost anything. Eventually. But the refugees on Earth didn’t have the resources to manage the repairs externally or the time to wait for things to happen on their own. Convalescents frequently cycled in and out of recharge instead of just remaining peacefully dormant.

When the manual repair was finished, Ratchet disengaged his medical line and yielded his place to Wheeljack, who snapped in to wake Bulkhead up. Optics focusing slowly, he stammered a Cybertronix request for a sitrep. Before Wheeljack could answer, he switched to English and murmured, “Scrap, that’s a lot of errors. Why are all my system pressures low?” He started to move.

Wheeljack planted a servo on his shoulder and pinned him to the berth. “You’re integrating new parts. We can bring you up to fifty percent power in a couple of _orns_.”

“Fuck the orbital watchtower,” he said in English. It was a hybridism Kim hadn’t seen before and she was momentarily distracted while she wrote it down to tell Chip later. “Can I see Miko? Where’s Miko?”

“Miko’s at school, because it’s Monday. Arcee is bringing the kids in as soon as they get free.”

“Monday?” And then, “My logs are messed up.”

“Yeah, you probably need to run some defragmentation apps.”

Ratchet, meanwhile, was setting up for the next surgery—replacing the armor plating on Hound’s helm. Armor and sensors weren’t protoform parts. They weren’t deep. They were damaged often enough that Ratchet kept finished parts and components in stock. The procedure was slated to take two hours only because Ratchet was going to slow things down by explaining to his human students as he went.

In a couple of days, he’d be ready to attach and re-calibrate the new antennae.

While Ratchet laid out the equipment, the humans took a lunch break. Despite his impatience with human frailty, Ratchet was careful to leave gaps in the schedule for things like eating and elimination. Carly took a tuna kit—the kind with the mayo in a tube—out of her backpack and climbed up onto the shelf.

“You good, Kim?”

“Yeah, sure! I mean, I can’t follow most of it anymore, but _I_ don’t need to. And the notes are feeling repetitive. But that’s just patterns, right? It’s all good.”

Carly sat down on the edge with her feet hanging over. “I didn’t quite mean that. The scraplets hurt some of our people pretty badly. Pierre barely leaves Ratchet long enough to sleep. You’re hovering over Hound. Bee’s going to be fine, except he doesn’t play Beetles music to say ‘hi’ when he sees me since it happened. Ironhide wasn’t even here, and he’s running security checks every ninety minutes around the clock.”

“Wait. That isn’t enough consecutive down time for maintenance.”

“No, it is not.” She opened a bottle of water and sucked down a long swallow. “Bobby and I are going to have an intervention.”

“Oh. Good.” Kim took out a granola bar and some water so she could eat socially.

“So?”

Kim blinked. “So? Oh.” She glanced over at the berth where Hound and Mirage were talking softly. “Hound is…very brave.”

“Oh, no question. I’m not sure I’d let student-nurse aliens operate on me less than an hour after crashing on their planet and meeting them.”

“Yeah. Anyway.” Softly, _softly_ , mecha had amazing hearing. “He was supposed to be my ride home Friday. And…he asked for me. And I couldn’t come. I wasn’t allowed to come. Because I am known to be _squeamish_.”

Carly mixed tuna and mayo with a tiny spoon in the plastic cup. “Well. Yeah. Humans are kind of squeamish. My uncle, he was in this motorcycle accident, almost ripped his leg off. They wouldn’t let the family in to see him until he wasn’t spraying blood everywhere and they’d fixed the bits of bone sticking out.”

“Oh, man!” Kim said. “Is he—”

“Got a metal femur now. He’s practically a cyborg. It was years ago. Anyway, humans don’t have combat protocols to engage so we don’t freak out during emergencies. Well, we do, I guess. But they’re not nearly as well designed. And we don’t have parallel tracks of thought. A mech can freak out _while_ staying calm. There’s a trick to it, apparently.”

“You handle it,” Kim said enviously.

Carly rolled her eyes. “When I did the math and realized how fast Ironhide’s repair colony was cratering, I ran into the bathroom and cried for twenty minutes.”

“Oh.” That was true.

Industriously, Carly began tucking away her lunch, one eye on her phone. She was cycling through mech telemetry reports. After checking four, she looked up again. “He was leading the parasites away from Ratchet, you know. He made himself bait. Several times. He kept coming back to draw them away so Ratchet could fix the Bridge. It was the last trip that they got him.”

Kim watched Hound’s procedure from the shelf. The usual routine where she sat on a table and chatted with the patient wasn’t needed this time. For the first phase, Hound’s cognitive processors were offline, and after that he was participating in tests on the sensor nodes. And, anyway, Mirage was right there. Kim mainly watched the spark graph on the big screen. It was more reassuring than watching Ratchet tinker with layers of plating. The diagram was adapted for human vision, so it was color coded and exploded into three layers. And looked pretty even. According to the numbers under neath, Hound was doing fine: minimal variance, perfect electropulse. He was okay.

***

On her way up to the mesa she finished the granola bar she’d abandoned at lunch. Grabbing a sandwich on the way up would have been nice, but Fixit was cooking for the humans again, and Kim wasn’t going to insult him by not being hungry.

It was cool and dim outside—the sun was already down. Optimus was in alt at the edge of the mesa, outlined by the last of the light. Kim thumped him soundly across the trailer mount as she passed. Hitting hard enough to make her own hand sting barely created a vibration he would notice. But, of course, he would have been tracking her from the moment she got out of the elevator.

The driver side door softly clicked open. The cab was slightly warmer than outside, a thoughtful touch she appreciated. “How is the hunt for more scraplets going?” she asked.

“Windblade has found twenty more, along with the remains of an escape pod, a couple of miles from the original location.”

Kim winced. “Viable?”

“Not for much longer. As each is collected, its primary processor is slagged with a laser. The remains will be brought to the infirmary tomorrow so that the NEST strike teams can dissect them.” He sounded very satisfied about this.

“You’re going to bring, like, fifty commandos into Ratchet’s infirmary and have them disassemble things? In Ratchet’s actual infirmary?”

“He is looking forward to it. The humans will bring their own tables and tools of course. Ratchet will demonstrate the technique and point out the weapons and vulnerabilities of the….The word I want does not translate. The lexicon offers ‘vermin,’ but vermin are alive. A scraplet has no spark. It replicates, but has no life.”

“Virus,” Kim whispered.

“You will participate as well.”

“I wouldn’t miss it! Are you kidding? Ratchet’s infirmary full of soldiers breaking things on purpose.”

“No. You will not observe this exercise. You will learn the structure and vulnerabilities of this parasite. A scraplet has no soul, but it has a processor equal to the most effective learning machine currently made by humans. Given a chance, they will come to recognize humans as a threat. Although it is unlikely, it is possible you may someday have to fight one. You will be prepared.”

Kim nodded meekly. “Okay.”

The discussion seemed to end there. There was a long silence after that. Kim brushed her hand along the hula-dancer interface. “Shall we work tonight?” She asked.

“Yes. It has been six days.”

“Hard question or easy question?”

“Hard question. Please.”

Kim took a deep breath. She had been saving this one. “What does _atheist_ mean? For Cybertronians?”

“The term is not very nuanced in English.”

“Most terms aren’t.

The word he said seemed to be mostly Ts and vowels Kim couldn’t differentiate. “Can I have—” the word appeared on her phone.

”It means to conclude that Primus is dead, and has been for a long time. We as a people lost both morality and mercy in his absence, and that is why our society degenerated into…predation and cruelty.”

“Oh.”

“In the years before the war began, Megatron was a great proponent of this position. He believed we must find and enact a moral life in the absence of God.”

“That’s…hard.” Not believing that there had never been a god at all. Being quite certain, in fact, that Primus must have existed, because mechanical life—unlike biological life—could not have evolved. Live on Cybertron had been created, presumably for some purpose. _Hopefully_ for some purpose. But Primus had been silent for so long….

“It is hard. And impractical. Megatron demanded absolute justice. He demanded those who had behaved cruelly be punished in proportion to their evil. This demand was fair….but we would not have become a moral society by forcing the most privileged forty percent of our people to fight to the death with brutal and inefficient weapons in the arena until only one survived.” Oooo. Kim winced. Mecha were really bad at atheism. Lack of practice, perhaps. Or lack of intuition.

Optimus continued, “But application aside, I believe the premise to be in error. Before Vector Sigma was sealed and placed beyond Megatron’s reach, the First of Line were still interfacing intimately. They assure me that at that time, up until the end, Cybertron was not a dead husk.”

Kim thought about that. “Chromia and Windblade,” she offered.

“Windblade did not have the opportunity, no. She is the youngest still remaining. But the others, Chromia among them. Yes. I do not doubt Chromia. Or Alpha Trion. Or Alita. However, there is another philosophical position we gloss as _atheist_ in English. This is the position held by Hound: that Primus still lives, he simply does not care. That no amount of suffering or destruction or cruelty would ever bring him to care, to correct the guilty, or show even a small amount of mercy.”

“Hound was a priest,” Kim said.

“He was in service at the temple of the The Cube.”

“And The Cube didn’t care what was done with the sparklings he generated,” Kim tried—briefly—not to feel horrible about this. She had been told about the last Prime to wield the Allspark. Poor Hound, caught between loyalty and compassion.

“Not _he_. It,” Optimus corrected. “The Cube had no sentient awareness. It was not a peripheral of Primus. It was a living device _created_ by Primus. Assuming our dogma is correct. It had data storage, but no true processor. It made no choices. Made no decisions. Understood nothing of morality or suffering—or anything else. It was a blessing of infinite worth, misused over and over again. Desecrated. And Primus permitted this desecration. Do you understand?”

“Oh. Probably not.” Or rather, she hoped not. It sounded awful. “I promise I respect it.” Anthropologists did not normally encounter the divine themselves. They certainly never published about it on the rare occasions it happened, but she had been in the right room to hear the stories once at the national convention. But professional humility could substitute for personal experience, and she planned to rely on that. “I would even if I hadn’t seen the Matrix create babies. Sparklings.”

“The Matrix is quite different. It is not only a generator of life-to-come, but a repository of souls that have passed. A font of wisdom from the worthy Primes who came before. It is not one, but many, and those many are not anchored in either time or sensation.”

“So…not helpful?”

“Perhaps I do not ask the right questions. Perhaps I am too impatient. Perhaps I do not have the intelligence to understand.”

Kim leaned in to the hula dancer. “Faith in your brilliance,” she whispered.

“How shall I answer that? Would ‘faith in your persistence’ bring you encouragement, beloved?”

“It’s lovely.” She tapped her fingers along the statue base. “Can I ask you a mechanical question?”

“I presume I will know the answer,” he said, clicking softly.

“Those feather-frond things….? Why? What do they pick up? And everybody had tactile pads and EM sensors and nose-wands to sniff things. What do the feathers pick up?”

“They are very high-end upgrades,” he said. “Unnecessary for normal operations. They offer very sensitive chemical and tactile analysis, processed by a node in the base, so that a neat composite stream of evaluation—rather than raw data—is transmitted along the bus. They were initially developed for advanced gas analysis.”

One had popped out of Sundor’s helm, and Mirage had shown one on Friday. Kim might have seen one on Drift, once, but she’d assumed it was a decoration. Even by mech standards, Drift was extravagantly beautiful. “That’s interesting. Do you have one?”

“I had a set. It was destroyed, and it seemed…vanity to invest the resources to replace it. Building one would take four orns in the molecular assembler. I could grow one out of protomatter, but maintaining my weapons systems is expensive. Perhaps after the war.”

“That would be nice,” Kim said. _After the war_ would be nice, if they could manage it.

“There were art forms—installations of texture and smell—that were built to be experienced with plumes.” He sighed. “I saved up to get the upgrade when I was still a junior librarian in the Iacon Records Hall. It took three earth years.”

“Damn.”

“A change of subject, perhaps?” He suggested. “Your choice.”

“Sure. What’s with the orbital watchtower?”

“What orbital watchtower?” he asked innocently.

“The one that gets cussed about so much. It must have done something terrible.”

“It is metaphorical.”

“Huh. What’s the metaphor?”

“It doesn’t quite translate.”

Kim smothered a smile. “Indeed,” she said mildly. “So many things don’t. How does it translate…generally?”

“Are there no terms in English you would be reluctant to discuss with me?”

Reluctant. May…be? Yeah. There was nothing she wouldn’t tell him, though, if he asked. Quite a few things had broken her heart to explain.

But…maybe she didn’t know what she was asking. And, to be fair, she was glad she didn’t have to explain some of the truly awful slurs humans used for each other. He had **Urban Dictionary** for that. 

“Relenting,” Kim said softly.

“My thanks, beloved.”

She dug out her phone and sent a glyph for “Flow.”

“You have a collective meal starting in nine minutes.”

“Oh,” Kim said. “How nice.” She checked her bag to make sure nothing had fallen out.

“How is Fixit’s experimentation with human dietary requirements progressing.”

Kim sighed. How could she even describe it? A couple of weeks before, Fixit had made a ‘traditional’ meal for the humans with courses— salmon mouse, shrimp in aspic, split pea soup, creamed spinach, chicken ala king, and baked Alaska for desert.

For an alien who had never eaten…it had been a good try. Impressive, really. Fixit was a genius. The salmon mouse had weirded Carly and Bobby out (mouse was chocolate, or, if you were being exotic, strawberry) but Dr. Nomura had taken their share when Fixit wasn’t looking, so that was fine. The salad course—in the name of Primus, what 1950s cookbook had convinced Fixit that shrimp in beef jello was a _salad_? It got worse from there. Maggie was trying to eat less meat, so bacon bits had been substituted for bacon in the pea soup. Likewise, the chicken ala king was tofu. For health reasons, Fixit had omitted the sugar in the desert; it was not a nutritional necessity, after all.

The creamed spinach had been fantastic. Kim had asked for seconds on that, which handily gave her an excuse to abandon the baked Alaska after the second bite. But. Kim was an anthropologist. In the field, you ate what your informants fed you, without complaining. That was the job. So, she had gotten almost everything down.

The fake-bacon pea soup had been a hard go, though. Kim had not been ready for something so frankly awful.

Fixit’s second foray into dinner—Tuesday night, before everyone had gone home for Thanksgiving on Wednesday-- had been lobster rolls, and he had followed the recipe exactly. While everyone was telling him it was delicious it was (it was, actually. Kim had not had one before—when she’d lived in Boston they had been way out of her budget) Carly had kindly mentioned that he didn’t have to stress out and make the most fashionable, cutting-edge food or the most traditional food or the most fancy food. Humans were happy eating regular, unfancy food too.

Apparently, Fixit had eagerly followed the advice and searched out cuisine that was less trendy. He’d downloaded cookbooks. He’d hacked the DFAC from the inside and worked out how to add his own ingredients to the normal shipments. They were having vegetarian lasagna for dinner.

“It will probably be fine,” Kim said.

***

She’d been reluctant to leave the mesa, and barely made it to the table as everyone was sitting down. The resident humans were there, along with Bobby and Dr. Nomura and—this time—June and Jack. The lasagna smelled normal. Kim was cautiously optimistic.

“Hi, everybody. Didn’t Miko stay?”

There was a brief pause and much glancing around. Carly scowled. “She yelled at everybody and stormed off when Bulkhead powered down to run a system defrag. She said she’d get a ride home with her host father.”

“Why? Did something happen?”

Fixit, setting plates of lasagna and salad (normal lettuce, Kim was happy to see) in front of Bobby and June, said, “She is impatient with the speed of his recovery.”

June took a breath to speak, paused, and shook her head.

Kim looked at the medical team. Obviously, they had all seen the…tantrum? Break down? “What?”

It was Bobby who answered. “Bulkhead is on reduced power, and most of what he’s got has to be directed to repairs. He can’t play video games or do karaoke or go on patrol. Or even recreational off-roading. And Miko doesn’t understand. Why can’t we just fix him?”

“We did fix him!” June snapped. Carly reached around Jack and patted her shoulder. June sighed. “Kim in human terms, the equivalent…Bulkhead had a major component failure in his power system, and he lost twenty feet of energon line. In a human, that would be like we had to remove five or six feet of his small intestine. _Oh_. And, we had to put a new valve and a pacemaker in his heart. In a human…this much alteration would be major and life changing with a long recovery. And a human would never completely…absorb the replacement parts.”

Dr. Nomura nodded sadly. “The ‘new’ regulator we implanted is a scaffold, not a complete part. It will guide his protomatter into building a perfect, integrated, living regulator. In a few weeks Bulkhead will be in perfect health. For Lt. Darby and myself, who have had so many patients make…incomplete recoveries, Miko’s impatience at the recuperation time seems profoundly misguided. But, of course, Miko is only afraid. She has come to rely on Bulkhead’s strength. To see him unable to even rise from the bed….” He shook his head. “The weakness of this moment is hard enough to come to terms with. But she must also face that Bulkhead—like all organisms—is a mortal being. She is young. It may be the first time she has faced this.”

“That is absolutely not a reason to be mean to everybody trying to help him,” Carly said.

“It is a reason. It is not an excuse,” he said. “She will learn from experience.”

“Now, wait a minute,” Carly protested. “You can’t just win all the arguments with being old.”

A small smile. “Fixit is the only person in the room older than I am. If he disagrees, I will concede.”

Fixit was setting the last plates in front of Kim and Maggie. He said, “Loving others can be frightening and painful. Bulkhead is much happier since meeting Miko. But you must make her understand that he will exert himself is she demands it. Attempting to speed up the repair or divert his limited resources from the integration may cause errors in the component. If we must start over, Bulkhead’s debility and suffering will be increased, and Ratchet will be very angry at the waste of time and resources.”

“I’ll talk to her tomorrow after school,” Jack said meekly.

That appeared to settle it. Kim silently wished Jack luck. And then, since she could not put it off any longer, she tasted the lasagna.

It was…normal. Kind of spinichy. And, perhaps, not as much cheese as Kim would have liked. But she had eaten many frozen dinners that were much worse. Relieved, she took bigger bite.

_***_

_Spent most of yesterday getting a run-down on different job categories for Cybertronians before the War (see 12/3 notes). Interestingly, there ~~was~~ ~~is~~ was a category ‘homemaker.’ Not housekeeper, they had that too. A team had to be fairly prosperous to have one, and it was usually a friend who wasn’t equipped to do whatever job the rest of the team were doing and/or really hated it. But there was lots to do, and if the team could afford it, it was a huge benefit to efficiency. And more comfortable for everyone._

_What the homemaker did is still unclear. Obviously not cook. Cleaning was managed mostly with drones. Although a big group would need someone to organize the drones._

_There seems to be some kind of weird data analysis or archiving involved, but whatever it is, Hound can’t explain it just using text. I’m looking forward to the vocalizer peripherals being fully functional._

_*_

_Well, shit. Last night Carly asked what was a good gift for a mech for Christmas._

_We’re up a creek here. Even if they were human and needed stuff like scarves or ties or bath bombs, they all draw a very nice dividend from their patents. If they want a thing, they can buy it._

_We went to talk to Maggie. She has already bought Fixit a 1931 first edition of the Joy of Cooking. It was absurdly expensive and very hard to find._

_I am skewered with envy. Why doesn’t Optimus have an absurd hobby I can indulge?_

_*_

_Before breakfast on Tuesday, Chip had a ‘linguistic interview’ with Optimus. I know this, because Chip turns in a weekly summary of what he’s doing. Optimus asked him about how talking points are organized in English; reading a meal as text (he struggles a little with Mary Douglas); how many words dogs, elephants, and dolphins are able to learn; whether criticisms of Deborah Tannen’s work are justified; the use of puns in country music; and ambivalence in Carly Simon songs about marriage._

_Well scrap!_

_! ! !_

_No, I am not ambivalent about marriage. Marriage is a social construction anyway, like monarchy, money, talk-like-a-pirate day, and the all you can eat buffet. All the ways we do things is just how we agree to do them, and what can be invented can be changed. We can rewrite the rules until the rules work._

_I really should not have dodged that question. We’re going to have to talk about this. I’ll probably wind up accidently proposing again._

_*_

_So according to Slipstream, Springer convinced Arcee to give interfacing a shot. It did not go well. The are currently not speaking. If there are more details to be had, he is not sharing them with me. Reminder: ask Chip what he’s heard._

_*_

_So I made a mistake not including Miko, Bulkhead, and Wheeljack in my sample. I’m now going to have to justify putting Miko into the sample, because she is a child, and the thought is going to completely freak out some humans (assuming anyone ever reads this) even though nothing about it is ‘sexual.’_

_Mecha have mentoring as a category of relationships. But they don’t see a difference between Miko’s 15 and Carly’s 20. Five years is so little time to them. And Miko isn’t going to get taller. And she isn’t their Student, she’s their crony for sneaking off and getting into trouble with._

_And---because they have ~~no libido~~ nothing a human would recognize as a libido I don’t even feel horrified that what they do have a drive to do is race each other at dangerously high speeds and climb fifty degree slopes in alt. Are these things objectively less dangerous than a pair of teenagers sneaking off to lovers’ lane?_

_Of course, teenage boys don’t come with safety features, and Bulkhead reformatted his alt like a race-car cage when he started doing missions with humans. Inside Bulkhead or Wheeljack is probably one of the safest places on the planet._

_So, anyway, Wheeljack has—because Miko not only has the soul of a Wercker, apparently, but the competence of a Wrecker—petitioned Springer to make her a full member. And Springer—because a scraplet kill-count of forty-nine when armed with a fire extinguisher and a bar of raw materials is impressive-- agreed._

_Optimus got wind of it and called a halt because nobody can join the Wreckers without being released from their existing duty assignment. I had a wonderful moment of relief, because I assumed that Miko’s supervisors were her parents in Japan (whom we could not tell at all) or her host-parents on base (who knew Miko were hanging out with ‘Bots but were not crazy and would surely draw a line) but no. Nope. Nope . Nope. As far as Optimus is concerned, the humans on base who are not in the military are my responsibility._

_And I’m, like, fuck no!  Because one thing I know about Wreckers is, if you join you can’t take any other titles, ever, and they honor that even after they leave. And Miko is fifteen and that is too young to decide she is never going to be a Mrs. or a Dr. or a “Capitan Nakadai” or a “Madam Prime Minister,” her brain isn’t finished yet. No._

_Miko is outraged. Understandably. Being a Wrecker is way better than being Prime Minister. Bulkhead is sad. Wheeljack is still looking for an angle. Yesterday, he pointed out that since some physicians had become Wreckers and kept that status-indicator, there was precedent for exceptions to the custom._

_And I’m like “Listen, you fucking idiot, if you make her a Wrecker she’ll want to go with you on combat missions and she is a child! She isn’t even allowed to purchase a ranged weapon or join the military, and you can wait.” Belatedly I realize it would have carried more weight if I’d called him a ‘stupid glitch.’_

_And Miko is barely holding it together anyway, because it’s been over two weeks and Bulkhead is still so weak. He got cleared for a trip to the target range yesterday. He never topped thirty-five on the way out, and he was still so winded when he got there he couldn’t charge up his weapons’ capacitors. Ironhide (who was babysitting them instead of Wheeljack because Ironhide knows what ‘prudence’ means) distracted Miko with some spectacular explosions._

_Carly and Fixit had been monitoring the whole trip on telemetry. The rest at the weapons range wasn’t enough, and Bulkhead’s spark variance was up two percent by the time they got back. He’d gone into λλλλ but he hadn’t asked Hide for a tow or even dropped speed because it would have scared Miko, even when Fixit told him over radio to stop being an idiot._

_So when the group returned, Carly and Arcee hauled Miko up the tunnel for a little talk._

_Bulkhead freaked out and tried to follow, but Fixit and Ironhide boxed him in. He apologized five times for being stupid and promised not to push himself, he’d stay on the berth for the next two weeks if they’d leave Miko alone._

_Miko came back and meekly apologized. Apparently, they had showed her a projection of how the integration of the regulator was progressing, including the technical details of protomatter and nanite repair, how the new regulator would be perfected down to the molecule, how they couldn’t see from the outside how Bulkhead was healing, but he was, and very soon, he’d be cleared for light duty. If his protomatter and spark weren’t strained—and on that point, if she allowed him to overexert his power system again, she was banned from visiting._

_This is third hand—I have the story from Fixit._

_And then Ironhide picked up Miko and set her on Bulkhead’s chest, and then finally his spark popped into a normal pattern._

_So, yeah, the range of Intimacy between humans and Autobots includes whatever it is Miko has with her partners._

_They want to make a human a Wrecker—the most deadly set of commandos on either side of a three thousand year war-- and they have made the case that a fifteen year old girl is worthy._

_She is due to return to Japan in May. By then, she will be four years away from 20 (adulthood in Japan), which is not a long time for a Bot. But is a long time for a human. And frankly, if I were Miko, I’d run away. Bulkhead will not be able to resist when she tells him to come get her. Wheeljack will not even try to resist._

_We are going to have to figure something out._

_*_

_I need to talk to Guillermo Mearing. Apparently, he’s been observing human-mech relations for, like, thirty years. Of course, he isn’t here a lot. And even if I got an interview, how would I ask about this?_

_*_

_Optimus is really struggling with parenthood. None of the mecha present have any training for caring for the newly sparked, we don’t have the facilities for doing it the usual way anyway, and none of them ever had close parental figures at this age, so they don’t even have a model for how it might work._

_Sundoor does have experience as an educator. The students she worked with were more than two Earth-years old, much better at handling complex data, and much less socially demanding than Hot Rod and Serenity. Like everyone else, she worships these children. Like everyone else, she is baffled about how to raise them._

_June and Will and Dr. No, the parents most steadily in ‘Bot country, have become special projects of hers. She questions them at every opportunity, wanting to know every detail, every worry of human parenthood. Most of what she learns is in no way applicable to mech experience. June thinks she is just seeking reassurance that children can be raised successfully, even in the hardships and chaos of Earth._

_I don’t know if I should be worried about the children. Does it hurt them to spend so much time with humans? Hot Rod spends every moment he can with Chip or Jack. Serenity loves everyone, but she communicates that feeling tactically. She doesn’t step up to overlap, she hugs. Gently, in the case of humans._

_Maybe this will work out. I have to believe that children who have their needs met and feel safe and have good relations with adults will turn out okay._

_*_

_It occurs to me that the absurd hobby Optimus has might be me. I hope he finds me as fun as Fixit finds cooking._

_I’m going to suggest we celebrate the holiday by giving each other a day. Probably it will be a day also spent on patrol, but that’s fine. And it can’t be actually on Christmas because too many people are taking that day off and after the disaster of the last holiday, we neither one of us wants to let out_ _guard down._

_~TBC_


	7. Soon, later, tomorrow

The watering of the trees was a daily ritual. It would be an hourly ritual, if the sparklings had had their way, but Optimus pointed out that the cycles of Earth life were matched to the planet’s rotation. He was persuasive, and tree maintenance was an afternoon activity.

A Norfolk Island pine tree for Seri had been set on the balcony beside Hot Rod’s potted palm, and both trees had been decorated with lights and garland. The sun lamps were on a timer. The water was carefully filtered and supplemented with minerals.

Every afternoon, the sparklings extruded a probe and pushed it into the soil. They checked the moisture, temperature, PH, and microbes. Then they conversed about tree needs and appropriate action. It was adorable. Kim looked forward to it. June and Bobby scheduled their breaks—as much as they could-- to coincide with tree maintenance.

It was only Kim and Chip there—because everyone else on base was preparing for the children’s holiday party—when Seri said, “Some humans kill the tree before bringing it in.”

“Yes,” Kim said.

“Why is our tree still rooted?”

Kim opened her mouth to say that they had been going to get Seri a living tree to care for anyway when her brother answered, “It’s wrong for mecha to kill Earth life. Only Earth life should kill Earth life.”

While Kim was still thinking, _Oh, dear_ , Chip said, “Not at all. There may come a day when you need to remove or prune a tree. Or other Earth life. But humans don’t do that when they are two months old. It takes a lot of experience before beings can make decisions for other life. And even then, we often do a bad job of it. Right now, you are learning about two kinds of tree. That is just the start.”

Hot Rod perked up. “I want a pet chicken,” he said.

Kim winced inwardly, although she had no doubt that the sparklings would be diligent about cleaning up the chicken poop. “Finish up here, we need to go to the party.”

The holiday party on Dec 22 was the result of long negotiations and a grand compromise. The babies had found out about Christmas shopping, Santa Claus, church programs, Christmas tree lightings, and concerts. Optimus, knowing that none of this was appropriate for his baby extraterrestrials, had been beside himself over not being able to remedy their disappointment.

General Morshower—who made a point of coming down to check in with the sparklings every few days—had stepped in with the tight, US Army organization that always took Kim’s breath away (when she could spare enough attention from the aliens she was studying to notice it.)

There would be a party. Of course, there would. It would be in the assembly area of Building B (which was much nicer than building E). It would not be a mech party—mecha did not have Christmas, after all. It would be a human party, with human children present.

That last had been what most of the negotiations were about. Mr. Keller had had kittens when he found out what NEST wanted to do. The sparklings knew Miko and Jack and Raf. Surely that was all the peer socialization they needed. Other children could not be brought in on the secret!

The general held his position: the alien refugee babies had asked to participate in human customs and he would not reject them.

The compromise was that most of the human children at the party—and they would all be the children of base personnel, living in family housing or in Jasper—would be told that the mecha were prototype rescue robots. Their parents would know better. The human residents of ‘Bot country would be there for support. Sundoor and Fixit would also attend to help keep an eye on things.

Optimus had expressed reluctance for the children to disguise themselves as ‘unliving clockwork mechanisms,’ but Fixit had humbly offered the suggestion that perhaps the Prime had not had time to examine the Human literature on cosplay and that he, himself, had greatly enjoyed the day he spent disguised as a primitive drone.

So the party was on. There would be a visit from Santa (or, as Seri and Hot Rod understood it, a Santa surrogate leading a benevolence ritual), craft tables where kids (or adults or baby mech) could make ornaments from paper and glitter glue, a tree to decorate, and Sergeant Novak to tell Christmas, Hanukkah, Yule, and Kwanza stories.

Kim had spent the last three days envisioning what might go wrong. She was still envisioning it when they went down the steps to Ratchet, who had come to give them a ride in his alt.

The huge Building B training room had been decorated with garlands and a couple inflatable snowmen. There was a tree—artificial, lighted, but not decorated. There were more craft tables than Kim had been expecting, and also more people. There must have been seventy people present, and adults outnumbered children.

Carly and Bobby were waiting at the door wearing community college robotics club T-shirts and carrying tablet computers. They looked very official, walking the sparklings in. Sundoor, followed by Dr. Nomura(who actually was a roboticist, so he must look the part in black slacks and a light green button-down shirt) with a tablet, would be the supervising ‘Bot on site. She had blanked her colors to grey with red stripes and reflective tape accents. She still looked far too nice to pass as Earth technology, but, of course, all the Human adults already knew who she was.

When the sparklings arrived, the human children were gathered around a motionless Sundoor, asking Dr. Nomura questions. He seemed every bit the benevolent engineer showing off his new toy. Sundoor looked….passive. Except for one stubby EM sensor that was aimed at the door. It was rotating slowly.

Kim came in ahead of the kids, stepped to the side and looked back. In the doorway, Serenity began to vibrate. Carly, coming behind her and pretending to look at the tablet, murmured, “Keep it together, Honey. I know you can do it.”

As the clump of children around Sundoor saw Seri, they pivoted and rushed over to this smaller, cuter robot. When they got close enough to actually block her path, she froze and announced, “I am a mark nine-thousand and ninety-six search and rescue artificial intelligence!” She had been coached to drop her language pack, but, as in practice, the attempt failed. Instead of the flat, emptiness of a mech doing a concept-for-concept translation from the lexicon, she built her sentences the usual way and then switched up the tone so the emphasis was in randomized places.

Kim had asked Ratchet about it. He said Seri had integrated the Cybertronix and English language files at the same time and they were both tied directly to her core machine code.

While the children were laughing and cooing over the “Mark Nine-thousand and Ninety-six,” Hot Rod had crept through the door and was now pressed to the wall beside it, sensors half-retracted and optical lenses unfocused. Bobby stepped over and leaned down to whisper into his microphone.

Raf, who had been watching the other children from the side, snagged Jack’s hand and led him over to Hot Rod. Kim, worried now, stepped in behind them, blocking the view as much as she could. Raf came in so close he was touching the silvery sparkling carapace, leaned up, and said firmly, “Do not be afraid. They are human children like me and Jack. This is okay. I promise to protect you.”

Hot Rod uncoiled an EM sensor and pushed it into the fabric of Raf’s Christmas vest.

“I can’t protect you from everything. But I can promise, you are safe here.”

The agreement _chrrrip_ Hot Rod gave was ‘assent from subordinate to supervisor,’ not ‘agreement between equals.’ It was entirely possible that Hot Rod did not recognize Raf as another juvenile. She would have to remember to ask about that later. Not now. _Now_ , Jack was leading Hot Rod in a slow circuit of the room, low-key and slow, pointing out the tree, the craft tables, the human snacks which must not be touched or probed because it was rude to handle things someone else would eat, the nice office chair draped with a green and red throw rug where Santa would sit….

Kim took a picture and texted it to Optimus. He had been right, bringing Jack Darby into this.

Bobby Epps followed behind, pretending to monitor Hot Rod from his tablet but instead—from the speed he was typing—answering a torrent of questions.

Across the room, Carly was explaining to the human kids that she wanted to see how Mark Nine-thousand could make a paper chain.

Well. _That_ was popular. There was a rush on the table as about fifteen kids raced to ‘teach’ the little robot how to cut and glue loops of paper.

Seri could handle paper—she had a drawing pad and fancy colored pencils at home—but the glue was new. The weight of it changed they way the paper responded, and in no time her servos were smeared and sticky. Puzzled, she stretched out her human-ish metal fingers for Carly to wipe off.

Jack was at another table, showing Hot Rod how to make a reindeer out of pipe cleaners.

Kim looked around. Most of the kids were snacking or making ornaments or staring at the cool robots. The adults were clustered around the walls or sitting on folding chairs, watching very carefully, but almost relaxed. Was this a normal party?

Seri’s paper chain was growing slowly. Hot Rod made two reindeer and then twisted a pipe cleaner into the shape of the glyph for ‘sharing.’

Chip had come to the party with a cane instead of his wheelchair. Kim wasn’t sure if this was something to worry about--or to what extent it was her business anyway. He filled a cup with punch and withdrew to the line of chairs around the edge. Keeping her eyes on the sparklings, Kim worked her way over and sat down behind him. “The punch looks weird. What is it?”

“Sprite and peppermint ice cream.”

“Is it gross?”

“It’s…pleasant.” He glanced at her wrist and then leaned in close to whisper, “You aren’t wearing your bracelet.”

Kim looked down. Sighed. “Rats.” She took a pen out of her bag and wrote a little “E” on the back of her hand.

Very, very softly, he said, “So I won’t ask if you’re still having that little problem.”

“I…guess so? How much would I think about it without… interference?”

“What about dark energon? Do you think about that?”

Kim made a face, whispered back, “ _That_ doesn’t get less interesting or alarming. Believe me.”

“Have you ever seen it?”

Kim watched Hot Rod and Jack trundle over to the tree to hang up the decorations they had made. “No, it’s too dangerous. We don’t find very much, and when we do, they transport it encased in lead.”

“Where do they store it?”

Kim turned to look at him. His hair was getting a little long. “I don’t know. Why?”

“Why?” he repeated blankly.

“Why? Why does it matter where it is? It’s toxic waste.” Kim winced. Toxic waste. “I suppose I hope it’s buried in an old salt mine somewhere.”

“I guess so.”

A cold thought occurred to her. She dismissed it. “ _You’ve_ never seen it right?” she asked, just to make sure. “I mean—humans don’t go near that. It isn’t even safe for mecha.”

“No, I’ve never seen it.”

One of the smaller children—two? four? Five?—had walked up to Seri and said something. Seri turned to face her and folded down until their eyes were level. It was cute. It made Kim a little nervous. 

It should not make Kim nervous. Seri knew the safety tolerances of humans. Her coordination was good enough to rule out accidents. On the other side, the kid was tiny. Nothing Seri could say would break her cover—preschoolers didn’t know what actual Earthling robotics technology could and couldn’t do. No worries. Everything would be fine.

Of course, something the preschooler said might upset Seri. They might be cleaning up this mess for weeks, if the child rejected the mech. Kim carefully relaxed her hands and wiped them on her jeans. Carly was right there, talking to Seri over the tablet. There would be no outright disasters, and if things were…unsatisfying…so what?

Setbacks were part of life.

Interaction with peers was _good_ for kids. It didn’t always go well, but you had to do it anyway. Everyone who had raised children thought this party was a good thing.

Everyone who had raised children had raised _human_ children.

It appeared the little girls was correcting something about Seri’s technique, because she was demonstrating making a paper chain now. What--? Oh. Seri had been doing the links all the same color. Apparently, that wasn’t how it was done.

Kim sighed and rolled her shoulders.

“Hey,” Miko said, pausing on her trip to the tree with a glittery felt owl wearing a Santa hat. “When do they bring in the fried chicken?”

“Sorry,” Chip said. “Fried chicken on Christmas is a Japanese thing.”

“Oh, come on. Next you’ll say there is no Christmas cake.”

He shook his head sadly. “No. But I’ve always wanted to try it. Maybe if you hinted to Fixit….”

“So you’re telling me Americans have no idea how to celebrate Christmas.”

He shrugged. “You might like the punch.”

***

Soon the tree was covered in homemade decorations, and the children were collecting to sit on a gaudy primary-colored rug to get ready for story time. One of the toddlers was fussing, and General Morshower (could you call him that when he was wearing a sweater with dancing reindeer on it) scooped him up and sat down at the back edge of the rug with the baby in his lap. Grandchild?

Sergeant Novak started the story time with a visual aid (five of the older kids with beach balls) showing how ‘winter’ worked and what a big deal it was that the days would start getting longer now. One of the beach balls glowed, which was a cool touch.

There were stories with lights on and lights off. During lights off, the Hanukkah story got a menorah, and then there was a story about a Christmas tree followed by a Kwanzaa story. He had enlisted different volunteers with hats and electric candles and multi-colored flashlights, and at one point Jack and another high school kid had handed out apples.

Probably, it was lovely, but Kim had more than half her attention on the ‘Bots instead of the story. All in all, it was nicer than a lot of the children’s holiday parties she’d watched in Boston church basements.

After story time, everyone lined up for the visit with Santa. A couple of the older human kids were shocked when the younger ones insisted that the little rescue robots had to meet Santa, too, but Jack stepped up and said _of course_ Santa would be excited to meet them. It wasn’t like they had those at the North Pole.

And then Kim saw three guys from the NEST strike team head for the door. 

Will Lennox was frowning at his phone. He kissed the baby he was holding and passed him to his wife and kissed her. And headed for the door.

Kim rocked forward and eased back. She pulled out her phone. The tiny color-coded icon that had replaced the ‘bars’ indicator had changed from a blue glyph meaning AWARENESS to a yellow STAND BY.

Kim looked around. General Morshower and two guys from a rail gun crew were headed to the door. Kim bounced on her toes, rolled her shoulders, put her phone back in her pocket and went over to Bobby. “Do you need to hand off your tablet?” she asked.

He shook his head and murmured, “Nope. Not till we get the pink ampersand-thing, or I get a text that they need me.”

Curiosity and worry warred in Kim’s belly. She smiled and joined a cluster of parents taking Santa pictures. The kids were cute. The Santa was a little thin and the beard was obviously fake, but it was Owens from the EU detachment, so he had a charming British accent. The tiny headset (Ratchet was monitoring from outside) was almost completely hidden by the hat. Each kid got a candy cane and a tiny bouncy ball as they finished. It was nice.

Jack went ahead of the sparklings. He did not sit on Santa’s lap, but he did shake his hand and solely ask for a motorcycle. Santa chuckled (it was a good chuckle) and said he wasn’t sure he could do better than the rides Jack was catching now. And if all of NEST knew that Jack was spending as much time with Arcee as he could, Kim might have to add them to her list.

Hot Rod was next. He was far too heavy to sit in Santa’s lap. He imitated Jack’s handshake and said solemnly, “If you please, Saint Nicholas representative, my soul’s desire is a torque engine.”

There was approved muttering from the human children close enough hear. They had no idea what the request meant or even that a real person was making it, but seeing a robot successfully navigate a visit with Santa was thrilling.

Owens, who had been carefully briefed by Ratchet, patted the thin mech shoulder and said, “I happen to know that as soon as you are ready, you will have the most beautiful torque engine.”

“So not for Christmas?” Hot Rod asked sadly.

“I don’t think so, my boy. Is there anything else you would like?”

He sighed. “Balls.”

Another good chuckle. “Well, certainly you will get balls. In fact, I have one for you here. I happen to know it is quite different from any of those you already have.” He set a tiny superball in Hot Rod’s hand. “It has a very high conservation of momentum. I think you will enjoy it a great deal.”

“Thank you,” Hot Rod said. All his sensor stalks were bent over the ball.

Serenity was next. She eyed Santa suspiciously. She lifted her metal chin and said carefully, “Good afternoon, Mister Clause. I would like to have my T-cog turned on, but Optimus will not permit it, and Ratchet says you only overrule human parents. And also, you lack a medical cable and cannot input an override code anyway. I think giving Ralphy the air rifle was unwise, but a functioning T-cog would not be worse. And we are on Earth and must properly celebrate the orbital cycle.” She sighed. “However, there a human present I would like. My appendages do not grip axels efficiently. I would like roller skates.”

Owens blinked behind the Santa beard. He cleared his throat. “Ho, ho, ho. Merry Christmas, Seri. I’m supposed to ask you if you’ve been a good girl.”

“Ratchet said not to worry about that. But it is customary to send letters to Santa. I can print out a behavioral analysis and send it to you.” She leaned in, “I’m afraid it will not cover a whole year.”

Owens had rallied. “That will be just fine, Seri. I’ll tell the elves to make a wonderful pair of skates, just for you.”

Raf was next. He was a little too old for Santa, but short enough that he didn’t look out of place. He asked for a catcher’s mitt. “Do you play little league?” Santa asked, handing him a candy cane and a tiny ball.

“No,” Raf said.

The party was winding down. The last few kids made it through the Santa line. The scummy remains of the punch were taken away. Kim grabbed one of the last tiny brownies off the tray.

***

Ratchet was not there to take them back to ‘Bot country, of course. He would be coping with whatever was going on. Kim hadn’t expected him to be there. Finding Hound and Bulkhead waiting instead was a pleasant surprise, though.

The two sparklings and Miko climbed into Bulkhead (the sparklings were both bulky and heavy). That left Kim, Dr. Nomura, Carly, Bobby, Chip, and the other two human children squeezing into Hound. Sundoor turned into a lacy ‘bird’ about twice the size of a bald eagle and took off.

Kim looked at the crowd about to climb into Hound and went around to the back to claim the cargo area.

“This space is not designed for human transport.”

Kim chuckled and climbed in. “I’ll just have to rely on you not to get in a huge wreck.”

A cargo handler uncoiled from somewhere and wrapped itself around Kim’s waist. She slyly glanced down. Cargo handlers, like buccal cavities, were too weird to show to humans. They were reminiscent of ‘tentacles,’ and humans had baggage there. Kim had seen them only a couple of times. “So,” she asked quickly, “what’s going on? We’re on alert.”

“We found an excavation. An energon mine.” He sounded very satisfied.

“We’re planning a strike,” Bobby said, bent over his phone. “This is gonna be great.”

“Oh. Right. Fantastic.”

***

Hound took the kids home after the party, but they were back the next afternoon, set up to sleep over in the cat habitat. The assault was scheduled for nine-fifteen in the evening, and Optimus wanted all the children secure and within reach. He did not say why. Kim assumed that the processor time normally allocated to keeping tabs on Raf and Miko was better allocated elsewhere during combat. (Nobody worried about Jack; he was absurdly prudent for a teenager).

Kim had spent the day on the balcony, watching preparations. She could read the body language now. Even if she had not seen the roster, she could tell by the way armor was set who was getting ready for combat and who was pissed they were not.

Bulkhead was sulking, hovering around the infirmary. “Cleared for light duty” did not include going into a fight, even though he was technically the Prime’s bodyguard now. Springer, now the second highest ranking officer, was resigned to staying on base. He and Hound were boxed tidily in the corner, hooked by a hard line into the big global antennae that Slipstream usually monitored alone.

Slipstream was off-site in Israel, doing secondary satellite monitoring from there.

Jazz, Ironhide, and Blaster were going. They had completely inspected and cleaned their weapons and replaced their lubricant. Arcee was also going, but she was off with Blur liaising with NEST in Human country.

Kim had not seen Optimus since before the party. He and Mirage were in Washington. There were meetings. He had texted a STATUS REPORT glyph midmorning. Kim had sent back an update about a paragraph long, as reassuring as she could manage.

He responded with a pdf file on the nuances of nine different kinds of status report requests. The particular icon he had used asked about how a person (rather than situation or data stream) was doing with regard to subjective experience.

Huh. Kim was going to have to have a long talk with someone about how glyphs were invented and evolved through use. Or maybe she’d hand that off to Chip.

She texted back that she was fine; worried in a general way, but nothing specific was wrong.

He glyphed back RESPECT FOR and METHODOLOGY, and added in English that the efficiency in generalized worry seemed more convenient than worrying about all possible items individually. 

She re-read the note several times while watching the activity in the assembly area. She also had eyes on the sparklings, but they weren’t up to much. The party the day before had given them a lot to process, and they were currently curled up on one of the couches, shut down to defragment their drives.

The couches had been rebuilt by Ironhide; the weight of the sparklings had broken three. The new models were slightly broader, so there was room for them to loosely fold with all their appendages pulled in. Chip, wedged in between them, had also fallen asleep.

Miko and Raf were on another of the new couches, playing video games. Jack had stopped playing for a sandwich.

Kim, restless, paced. Her eyes frequently slipped to her watch. Dawn in east Africa was creeping closer. Soon it would be time to send the kids off to Max’s room with Chip and Sundoor.

Down in the assembly area, Steeljaw had erected a folding table and was sorting through a pile of tiny disks. They might have been gems or seeds, glittering in the delicate claws. They were explosives.

Jack, sandwich finished, joined Kim at the rail. For a few minutes they stood there quietly, watching Steeljaw test miniature grenades.

“I used to wonder,” Jack said, “what could possibly be going on when Mom got called to work all night. I mean, what possible operation could be run out of Jasper, Nevada?”

Kim chuckled. “Last place anyone would look.”

“Then I’d wonder…was it dangerous? Was it just some kind of red tape? Or training? What could be going on?”

Kim sighed. “She’s not a combat medic. She doesn’t go anywhere.” If you didn’t count falling off the berths, energon spills, or electrical burns, there were hardly any workplace hazards.

“My Mom…is a mechanic for aliens.”

Kim smiled thinly, unable to push aside the awareness that there would be patients tonight. “Still a nurse. It’s pretty much the same job. Just larger patients. And more physics.”

“I wish I could do more to help,” Jack said.

Kim glanced over her shoulder at the dormant sparklings. “ _More_ than look after the only children born in hundreds of years?”

Jack followed her gaze and sighed.

“We haven’t tested it with mecha yet, and their internal combat protocols are better than ours…but it really messes humans up when they go to war worried about their children.”

“It…it can’t be the same….” he said protested weakly.

“It won’t be the same,” Kim agreed. It might be worse.

The wall speakers cracked to life and began to blast Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It.’ A second later, the door to the human dorm slammed open, and Bobby Epps came tearing out in desert camo. Kim had time to register that he was carrying his boots as he tore past her and slid down the railing.

On the sofa, Chip stirred and sat up.

June and Carly came out of the inner hall, not running, but in a hurry. “What’s up?” Kim called. The status icon on the phone was pink and blinking.

“Weather front moving in. Ndutu lake is about to get snow,” Carly said, not pausing. “We’re moving early.”

“It doesn’t snow in Tanzania.” Kim knew people who had worked there. Tanzania was liberally sprinkled with world heritage sites. Anthropologists went often. Nobody packed a parka.

June gave her a helpless look as she continued for the steps. “I guess the weather hasn’t settled down yet.”

Kim tried to smile. “I guess this is it. Let’s get the kids inside and put Max in her duty station.” Kim took out her phone and texted the kids ATTENTION glpyhs.

“Are you staying with us?” Jack asked.

Kim shook her head apologetically. “I’ve had enough first aid lessons to be able to fetch things.”

***

The massive weather front had appeared with no warning just to the east and was slamming its way across a (surely very confused) wildlife preserve. Ratchet was happy to grumble about just how much this changed their plans.

The cover of the storm made the operation much less risky; the _Nemesis_ , built for deep space engagements, would have trouble targeting in a dense-atmosphere storm. Since just firing missiles from ten miles up and retreating would not be an option, it would have to descend. It was big enough to be tracked by the turbulence it made in the storm, despite its hull’s invisibility to sensors.

But the risk of _Nemesis_ involvement had also offered great reward; knowing the ship’s location would mean a chance to target their _own_ weapons, and the Autobots had had months to prepare. A lot of NEST assumed the war’s endgame strategy required seizing or destroying the Decepticon warship. Using the storm as a chance to _avoid_ luring it into combat was probably getting some resistance from the brass.

Kim paced the observation shelf as the last minutes of the new countdown ticked away. The risk on this operation had just dropped a lot, and she should be grateful. The _Nemesis_ had never been a priority for Optimus—taking it intact was improbable and the casualty rate would be terrible. Bringing it down had better odds of success, but its engines and fuel would do terrible environmental damage wherever it crashed—and if it came down on a city…. Kim shuddered.

She should be grateful the Nemesis wouldn’t be effectively involved today, but this weather thing also made her nervous. Snow in southeast Africa? It had been half a year since Megatron attacked (re-aligned? Disrupted?) Earth’s magnetic field. The Bots all said the lasting differences could be measured in millateslas (not a lot, apparently?), and didn’t do anything that correlated with any of the weird weather phenomena. 

Why was there snow?

Neither the weird weather nor the warship boded well for long-term discretion. NEST monitoring of social media and meteorological professional groups reported that humans had started to notice the unseasonable storms, unusual lack of rain in mountain ranges, surprise hail, the _two_ rains of frogs in Serbia in November…. The heat wave in Antarctica was being passed off as global warming, but humans only fell for that because they were bad at math. The masquerade was holding thinly at this point. The weather might spoil it. But so might any poorly-explained skirmish between giant robots. If the _Nemesis_ came down—even if nobody got hurt—everything would come out in the open.

If the _Nemesis_ was brought down, the war would be essentially over. Decepticon carnage was certain. The environmental damage to Earth would probably be terrible. Almost certainly terrible. And if Megatron survived, he would not surrender, everyone agreed on that. But—

Kim almost wished—

It wasn’t like she would miss the Decepticons who crewed the _Nemesis_ —

That was the wrong thing to think about, surely—

But the alternative was Optimus trying to end the war himself—

The relentless circle of worry and strategy was interrupted by the announcement that the gate connection was open. All of the screens that usually showed medical information for the students (who could neither scan nor jack into their patients) were now showing combat data. Ratchet monitored telemetry over radio, but the actual action he viewed on externals.

There were no satellite pictures: the storm was too dense. There were visual feeds from six different angles. Some of them showed darkness and snow. Others showed heat or radar impressions. Kim couldn’t make sense of any of it.

There was nothing for the humans in the infirmary to do but stare at the screens and worry. “Is there an audio feed?” Kim asked.

Ratchet gave her a pitying look. “It is in Cybertronix, on four channels.”

Of course it was.

Some of the screens were _colorful_ now: explosions and beam weapon strikes. Heat. Targeting. There were shapes, movement—Decepticons.

The center of the target area was a small gash in the side of a ravine. It was dark behind the reflections from the falling snow. It was slightly warm on all the heat projections.

One of the images fizzed and blinked off for a moment, came back up, steadied.

Kim clasped her hands together, wishing she had had a chance to speak to Optimus.

Movement upward—something launching. Small missiles traced after it, some of them hit. It returned fire—

Kim wished she knew which mech was broadcasting each image.

More colors. More chaos. Three screens whited out and went dark before skipping to other angles. One of these was a very nice targeting scanner. An indistinct shape rippled with spots of color—and then a spray of projectiles striking with tiny explosions.

Everything was moving and then—suddenly—nothing was.

Slow darkness. Was that…good?

The filters on the video changed almost at once to simple infra-red. Half the views shifted outward, the other half rushed the opening in the hill. The combat phase was over. Pierre and Carly hugged each other, and Dr. Nomura cheered and did a little dance.

Kim realized her jaw ached and wiggled it around. The worst was over.

The next step would be a survey of the mine. If they could come away with any energon, that would be a success. If there was dark energon, they needed to know before the mine was sealed—

Ratchet snapped up a mech-sized pry bar from the tools table and threw it so hard into the far wall that bits of rock showered the floor. He was cursing in Cybertronix. Kim caught ‘ _stupid glitch’_ and ‘ _factory reject clock-work mechanism_.’

The students mostly froze, gaping at him, but Carly ran forward, fearlessly rushing an enraged mech who had small armaments springing up on both shoulders. “Ratchet? What’s happened? Ratchet!”

Ratchet froze, eyes locking onto Carly. He snapped the weapons away. In a cold, hard voice he said, “Those…dipsticks tried to deploy a dark energon weapon.” His vocalizer glitched for a moment. “Of all the stupid, self-destructive—even humans would not be so insane.”

“Ratchet, what happened?” Carly pressed.

“They fired it once. Once. Oh-h. And make no mistake, it would be a terrible weapon, devastating and cruel, except the range is short, the power consumption prohibitive, and the mis-made piece of engineering scrap exploded after the first shot, killing the operator! Of all the wasteful, incompetent—” He reset his optics twice. “We’re going to have to decontaminate the entire squad. And ninety-three square meters of ground contaminated by dark energon.” He sighed. “There are injured. They are being stabilized on site. We cannot bring them back to base until they are decontaminated, and by then, the Bridges will be occupied.”

“Is that going to be a problem?” Pierre asked. “Do you…do you need to go?”

“Fortunately, they do not need me, since I am forbidden to go.” He paused. “Optimus redeployed the humans to the perimeter as soon as dark energon was detected. Our NEST allies have not been exposed.” He looked down at the students, who had clustered together next to Carly. “We must stand down for three point four hours. You are directed to attend to biological needs. Return in exactly two hours so we can go over the initial procedures.”

Kim, still on the shelf, sat down and buried her face in her hands. Bobby and Will and the others were okay. That was good. Mecha were hurt…but not so badly they couldn’t wait. And mecha were built to be fixed.

Ninety-three square meters of ground contaminated with dark energon. Within ten miles of two major world heritage sites and between three wildlife preserves. Not good. Not good. But it could be worse.

The Decepticons had kept their operation discrete enough to go unnoticed by tourists, game wardens, and archaeologists alike. The mess made by the attack? The extra hours in the open cleaning up? Kim could only hope that went well, too.

Kim spent a few minutes breathing, trying to settle. The fighting part being over…was good. Very good. Very good. The waiting….would be hard.

When she felt she could reasonably fake being calm, she headed up to Max’s room. The kids were all working together to build a tower out of Ironhide’s Jenga set. Chip was sprawled in a bean bag chair, eyes on his phone. Kim squatted down beside him. “All quiet here?”

He nodded to the block tower, which was now so tall Raf was having to stand on Hot Rod to place pegs. “We’re good.”

Kim glanced at Sundoor, squatting in her lacy bird-alt next to Max’s cat carrier. “What’s she doing?” she whispered.

“Probably still analyzing episodes of _Captain Kangaroo_. You owe me for dozen questions on Mr. Moose and Bunny Rabbit, by the way. Mass media explanations are your job.”

“Surreal?”

“So much.”

“Well, you’re probably old enough to have watched it first-run.”

He gave her a look.

“Any conclusions?” Kim asked.

“You’ll have to ask.” He paused. “I think she ordered a crate of ping pong balls.”

Kim took a moment to think about that, and decided there was nothing to say. “So, it’s going well at the mine.”

He indicated the phone. “I know. Chromia has been sending video clips and pithy comments.”

Kim looked him over in surprise. “Should I add you two to the list?”

“Oh, no. I’m in her circle of friends, but we aren’t dating. No off-roading or naps in her cab or anything.”

“Yes, but….she’s not supposed to be using private com channels during combat. It’s protocol.”

He made a face. “I can’t figure out how she decides which rules to follow. Chain of command doesn’t seem to apply.”

“What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “Everybody who doesn’t use an affection address-affix uses speaking-to-a-superior. Even Springer, who is officially second in command.”

“Optimus?” Kim prompted.

“I haven’t heard them talk enough to be sure, but I have heard the ‘beloved’ address. And once I think the more humble verb-form.”

“Hmmm.” 

“It’s a religion thing, isn’t it?”

“Maybe. She’s the senior First of Line. Interesting.”

He picked up a stack of paper and passed it over. “Here. You want to look at these. We had art-time before they started on the tower.”

It was art. The sparklings had been given high-quality drawing paper and every sort of crayon and colored pencil imaginable. They hadn’t always enjoyed them—between the complexities of fine motor control and their patchy mastery of two-dimensional representation art experiments sometimes ended with frustrated howls.

The top one was a picture of a guitar—not very detailed but very clear and vibrant. “Miko?” Kim asked.

He nodded. The next one down was….abstract? A multicolored fat donut made of lines? A crude apple? Kim wondered what it was supposed to be. “Was one of the sparklings trying to draw a magnetic field?” It didn’t look like Carly’s renderings of spark fields, but of course the mecha perceived it differently.

“Oh, that one’s not the sparklings. That was Raf. I asked him what it was. He said, ‘the world.’”

“Oh. Well.” It…wasn’t ugly. Kind of uneven. And he’d mixed crayon and colored pencils. But maybe it was an abstract on purpose. Kim turned it upside down to see if that helped. Oh, well. Raf had never said he wanted to be an artist.

The next one was a portrait of a mech. It was skeletal, the bare minimum of carapace. Definitely a baby mech. It was fuchsia, brown, and orange. “Wow,” Kim murmured. “Seri wants paint nanites.”

He glanced over. “Oh. That one is Hot Rod. You can sort of see the third leg. Yes, he is all excited about paint nanites. Ratchet says it’s complicated, like keeping a pet or a tree. He’s making them wait another month.”

The next image had recognizable pig-tails and was bright yellow. “Oh. Both of them.”

Chip looked up and adjusted his glasses. Very solemnly he said, “They are going to be very beautiful.”

“Oh. Yes. Very!” Kim agreed. The change would take getting used to. Yellow was probably going to be a…smoother look than the fuchsia and brown and orange. “They’ll probably change colors a lot at first.”

“Actually, I’m sure it will be completely adorable.”

The last image was a rough but recognizable view of the mesa from the highway turnoff. “Jack?”

Chip nodded absently.

With mellow crashes of wood falling, the tower came down. Miko cheered. Jack admonished Seri for not getting out of the way. Raf and Hot Rod clung to each other giggling.

***

Ratchet’s central screen showed the main activity in Tanzania: a thick stream of molten stone pouring into the mouth of the mine. The sun was just up, the snow was melting. The last of the recovered energon was being packed up….

And there, in the middle, a column of glowing lava, dropping out of nowhere.

With the second Ground Bridge coming on line at the Diago Garcia site, capabilities were completely transformed. Linked together, the bridges could open a link between two off-site destinations and transport material directly. The Diago Garcia Bridge was open at Kilauea, just under the lava outflow. The Jasper Bridge was linked in and open in Tanzania, pouring into the mine. 

The energon that was still there wouldn’t be damaged by the heat, and the stone plugging the entrance wouldn’t put the treasure out of reach forever. But for now, it would be safe from Deceptions, who could not discretely come back and remove the newly situated igneous rock. It was an elegant solution, and it had been Maggie who had thought of it. Optimus had given her a commendation and a raise.

“All right,” Ratchet said, and everyone tore their gaze from the screen. “Triage is easy today. We have two seriously injured, un-stabilized patients. We are going to be short-handed because Fixit can’t leave the Bridge, and Wheeljack had his arm ripped off. Oh. How unfortunate. That is a pun in English.”

“So, Wheeljack is one of the first patients,” Carly said.

“No, it was a clean slice. He’s stable. Our first patients will be Drift and Bumblebee.” He paused. He sighed. A series of diagrams appeared on the secondary screens. “Drift got torn by a vibra-knife and the claws of a Decepticon named Ravage. Damage includes fuel lines, actuator cables, and the second processing node. Arcee will supervise Carly and Pierre in establishing medical monitoring, connecting an energon drip, and cleaning out the damaged components. I’ve sent the manual to your tablets. Relevant sections are highlighted.”

He turned to Dr. Nomura and Nurse Darby. “You two are with me. I…am not entirely certain how we will proceed. Bumblebee was the target of the dark energon weapon. I cannot tell from his telemetry how the blast penetrated his shielding or the mechanism of the damage.”

Dr. Nomura nodded thoughtfully. “What does the damage consist of?”

“An estimate six to eight kilograms of inactive protomatter,” Ratchet said dully.

“Dead?” June asked. “ _Dead_ protomatter?” 

“Apparently.”

“Jesus,” June said. “Is he conscious? The pain—”

“No. Arcee settled him in alt and induced a medical shut down. When we get him back, the first step will be to evaluate and decide if medical statis is necessary. If the only damage, indeed, is to his protomatter, then after we excise the necrotic tissue—how appalling that that almost has an English equivalent—he should be stable and ready to begin healing.”

“Even eight kilograms would not normally be life threatening in a mech his size,” Dr. Nomura said, flipping through the repair manual that had arrived at his tablet. “Assuming we can remove the inactive material.”

Ratchet shifted restlessly. “If there is no other damage, then no. Rest and energon will set him to rights. At the moment…his spark is stable, and his cognitive functions were normal before he was sedated. But until I have a cable interface, I can’t be sure of anything.”

It was another hour before the strike team was ready to withdraw through the Bridge. Drift came to the infirmary first. He was in root form, limping unevenly, dripping coolant. Chromia, towing Bee, lurched in slowly behind him.

Kim’s phone buzzed with a text. OUR MISSION IN TANZANIA HAS CONCLUDED AND WE HAVE WITHDRAWN. I WILL BE OCUPIED WITH MEETINGS FOR AN UNDETERMINED TIME. I MAY BE LATER THAN YOU ARE ABLE TO WAIT.

Kim closed her eyes for a moment, smiled. I’LL WAIT, she texted back.

Ratchet directed Drift to lie down on a berth, lifted Bumblebee, still in alt, onto an active pallet, and motioned Chromia to park in the corner to wait her turn. While they were still being settled, Arcee arrived in her large, compound root form, Eject tossed over her shoulder. She set him down next to Chromia and headed over to join Carly and Pierre.

Ratchet jacked into a medical port under Bee’s hood. A moment later his frame shook slightly, and he protested in Cybertronix. Ratchet clicked back to him and reached out in a gesture that looked comforting, but in fact braced some of the weight as Bee unfolded in transformation.

Yellow armor split and split again, coming apart to reveal inner mechanics and a rainbow pool of protomatter.

At first, Kim was confused. The small mound of white inside Bumblebee looked like snow. But even if the blizzard had gotten _inside_ his carapace, surely the snow would have melted by now. How could—

Was that what dead protomatter looked like? White and…almost fluffy?

Dr. Nomura scrambled around the splayed armor for a better view.

Ratchet, after a long moment, sprouted a sensor on one of his digits and reached toward the heap of not-snow.

June jumped in front of him. “Don’t you touch it,” she snapped.

Ratchet trilled a ‘stand down’ order at her. “I have to analyze—”

“Are you sure it’s inert? Absolutely not spreading? Nothing is in there still doing damage?”

“Nurse Darby, it was a-a death ray. There is nothing that could—and he’s been decontaminated. It’s fine.”

“It’s new. You said so. You don’t _know_.”

Ratchet glared at her for a moment and then produced an external probe from his subspace and pointedly waited for her to move aside. He poked the end of the sensor wand into the white mess fouling Bee’s protoform. “It is inert. There is no propagating damage.” He twisted the probe slightly. Some of the white crumbled. Was it somehow desiccated? Burned to ash? Had it popped like popcorn? “Normally, I’d cut a dead patch out with a laser scalpel.”

Dr. Nomura, scrambling over what was part of Bee’s bumper when he was in alt, tapped the white with a gloved finger. “It won’t need cutting. What about those small trowels we use to spread raw materials jell?”

The ‘small trowels’ were re-purposed serving utensils Carly had ordered online and reshaped with a hammer. Humans didn’t have tools for doing surgery on aliens.

“Scrape it out?” Ratchet said dubiously. “No. I’ll use a friction and a suction wand.”

“Respectfully, your time is better spent analyzing the data from the injury, Doctor,” Dr. Nomura said meekly.

“Primus! How many times do I have to tell you? There is no ongoing hazard. The patient has been decontaminated. The damage is not spreading.”

Dr. Nomura gave a fractional bow and said nothing.

Ratchet clicked and whirred with a system’s check. “In fact, one of the few compensations of an analog brains is analytical plasticity. You are likely to devise a new procedure as quickly as I could. And I do need to check his systems. You may proceed.”

“Kim?” June called. “Can you bring us a bucket?”

Kim wasn’t sure now much volume each kilogram of protomatter took up, so she brought two plastic industrial buckets. As she approached the pallet, Ratchet reached down absently and set her beside the patient. Close to, Bee looked dull, almost pastel. “Did the new weapon do something to his paint nanites?” she asked. “Are there other systems affected?”

Ratchet’s optics reset with a snap as he swung around to look. “Oh,” he said. “No. His paint job is fine. He’s just covered with decontamination residue.”

“It’s biodegradable,” June called up from where she and Nomura were donning masks, double gloves and goggles. “It will wash off.” 

“We could spray him down with bacteria,” Ratchet said tartly. “It’s digestible. But that would be disgusting, so he will just have to wait.”

“Sorry,” Kim said.

“No. Under the circumstances, it is reassuring to know that the humans are on the lookout for the unusual. You may continue.” He stopped. “But from a distance. You have no training in protoform handling.”

Kim spent the next couple of hours fetching for the repair teams and pacing the infirmary. Initial procedures on Bee and Drift were completed and the patients hooked to monitors with internal repair protocols running. Chromia settled herself on a berth and opened up without a word. Her carapace folded back to reveal protomatter spotted with white lesions. Ratchet scanned and monitored her, and again—was this significant?—the humans with medical training cleaned out the flaky wads of dead material. 

Wheeljack came in carrying his own arm. Arcee and Pierre got busy tidying and capping the torn lines and wires so his internal systems could start prepping for reattachment. Eject had cut a lumbar hydraulic line, making both transforming and walking in root form impossible. Carly replaced the tiny tube, taped up the inner shielding, and smoothed the edges of the wound so that Ratchet could weld the armor later. 

When the last patient was bedded down, Ratchet dismissed his human assistants and began to clean and organize the tools and supplies. Kim retreated back to the shelf. It was after midnight now, and she was getting a little tired. The shelf had a good view of the corridor to the assembly area. She could sit and wait.

When Optimus returned, he was likely to stop in the infirmary anyway. Kim had been counting patients damaged by the new death ray. There had been two repairs; one was missing.

Or not _missing_. Probably in meetings with Mearing and Keller.

When she heard mech steps, finally, in the tunnel, Kim was seated on the shelf floor, slumped ungracefully against the back wall. The stone was hard and uncomfortably cool, but there was no danger that, if she fell asleep, she would tumble off a folding chair and drop off the edge.

She was standing at the nearest point to the entry when—slowly, unevenly—Optimus crossed the yellow line. He paused, changed his trajectory, and angled toward the shelf. He was moving like Chromia had, almost limping, steps too small. Kim swallowed hard.

The shelf wasn’t nearly as high as the balcony in the assembly room, and he stopped a step too far back so he could look down at her. “Ah,” he said softly. “I fear extending your active period so long was a sacrifice.”

“Hello, Beautiful,” Kim said. “Welcome home.” And then she froze, because the question she wanted to ask was ‘are you all right?’ but he disliked vague questions—and also wasn’t above using them to deflect from difficult topics. “Request for situation report,” she managed. There were no convenient suffixes in English to mark ‘humility’ or ‘answer optional’ or ‘subjective experience.’

“We accomplished all primary objectives. Human casualties were below predictive models. The operation does not appear to have been detected by civilians. Our NEST allies are satisfied with the joint team’s performance.” He paused. “Three Decepticons were killed. There were no NEST deaths.”

“And you?” He was too far away to touch, but close enough that Kim could see streaks in the decontamination film.

“I was within the blast radius when energon weapon experienced structural failure, however the Matrix appears to have provided some protection. I have lost only six hundred grams of protomatter.”

A little over a pound. Not much. Not even more than his internals could clean up without help. “Is Ratchet going to…”

“Of course, I am,” Ratchet snapped. “And speaking of excising damaged protomatter, stop putting it off and lie down.”

Optimus reached out. Kim squatted and crawled on to his broad servo. The residue was both slick and sticky. She didn’t react.

Kim was set on the worktable above Optimus’ head as a safety measure for both of them. She wasn’t wearing safety equipment that would both protect his inner components from her moisture and protect her skin and respiratory system from microscopic fragments of metal. 

Optimus opened his torso and folded back layer after layer of casing and components until thick ‘coils’ of rainbow protomatter glittered under the infirmary lights. Kim scanned the shifting surface for white. For a long moment she saw nothing, and then—twisting jerkily—one of braided silver strands thrust a white lump about the size of a quarter to the surface.

Ratchet tisked softly and used an external tool to scoop the ruined protomatter out and drop it into the bucket.

“Can I see his telemetry?” Kim asked.

Ratchet glanced at her. “No.” He paused. “Electropulse variance at three point seven percent, but stable. There’s nothing to worry about. I can’t translate the ways—”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Optimus said firmly.

Ratchet ignored the interruption. “these ‘dead’ patches are fouling up protomatter function, but he’s bearing the strain well, and that will be sorted out as soon as we finish here. There is some pain, but, again, when the lesions are removed the pain will end.” He spotted another fluffy-looking white lump and snapped it out in a single movement. “Until the missing tissue is replaced there will be some sensations of weakness. Extended rest and repair periods would be helpful.”

That was a hint. Kim was Prime’s cover when he needed more repair time than the Autobots wanted to admit to the Human military. “Yes, Ratchet.”

There were four more of the irregular white lumps. By the time Ratchet was done, Kim was lying along the edge of the table, one arm stretched out so that her fingertips could rest on Optimus’ slightly sticky helm. 

He was going to be fine.

Ratchet finished and motioned for Optimus to close and sit up. Neither of them said anything, and Kim wondered if they were quarreling over radio or if it really was a deliberate silence between them. Ratchet produced and offered a two-liter beaker of energon. Optimus took it and downed the contents without argument.

Unable to stand it anymore, Kim called softly, “Hey? Want a wash?”

“Thank—”

“No,” Ratchet cut in firmly. “He will just have to live with the residue, distasteful as it is; there is barely time for a minimal five-hour repair cycle before his next meeting.”

“You many stay with me,” Optimus said. “If you will not find it too uncomfortable.”

“Oh. _Yes_. Please.”

Optimus folded into alt and took the last empty corner of the infirmary. Kim grabbed a pile of clean shop towels to use as a pillow and hurried after him. And then rushed to the tiny human sanitary facility Fixit had built because human biology was inconvenient. And then, at last, climbed into the truck cab to make a quick nest in the passenger seat.

“This rest period is shorter than you are used to,” Optimus said through the cab speakers. “If I am asking too much of you—"

“Please, let me stay.”

“You were afraid.”

Kim shrugged. It was war. She was always afraid.

“I as well, when I saw that they had tried to weaponize the Blood of Unicron,” he admitted.

“We’ll worry about it later.” Kim ran a finger along the base of the statue. “We’ll worry about it a lot, I promise. For now, just grow protomatter.”

“I suppose that is wise council,” he said. “You must sleep as well.”

“Heh. It’s two in the morning. I’m probably asleep already, I just don’t know it.”

~TBC


	8. Frame of reference

She woke stiff and momentarily disoriented—she was in Optimus’s cab, but _not_ on the mesa—and then remembered how awful the night before had been.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Kim. I need to leave for Switzerland in eight minutes.”

Kim managed—barely—to stop herself from asking to go with him. He had work. She had responsibilities. It was Christmas Eve—she needed to call home. There were presents still unwrapped. The Sparklings wanted to go caroling over in Human country. “Love you,” she murmured sleepily. “Have a good day.”

***

Caroling in the offices was not as exciting as the kids had hoped: about a third of the office staff were on holiday. Kim spent most of the day on a balcony couch watching holiday movies with the sparklings and whoever was available to join them.

Raf couldn’t explain being out of the house, so he wasn’t there, but Miko and Jack were. So were June and Miko’s host-dad (his name was Sal, he and his wife—a custom seamstress who took orders over the internet-- had an elaborate terrarium for their pet gecko), and a few of the NEST guys (Graham and Ford and the tall guy who sang baritone when he did karaoke) who had not gone home for the holiday. 

All the mecha who were on the injured list or had time off came and went, clustering around the rail to watch the movie. Mini-cons, of course, could fit on a couch. The large mecha settled just on the other side of the railing. Max moved from person to person, showing no preference for either Humans or ‘Bots. Fixit made popcorn. It was a nice day.

Optimus arrived toward the end of _Elf_ , the last movie before the human kids went home and the sparklings were scheduled to refuel. Kim got up and eased her way to the railing. “Do you have time for a repair cycle?” she whispered. “We could go up on the mesa?”

“I would prefer to stay here for a little while, if that would be all right?”

Kim frowned, shooting him a look. “Of course. Here. Scoop me up.”

He settled her in the carrying position, close against his chest. She was wondering how to ask how he was doing when she felt a soft flurry of clicks: mech laughter. “What?” she whispered.

“You cannot follow the radio conversation,” he murmured, bending his head close above hers. “Seri asked Wheeljack about the flight mechanism for Santa’s sleigh, and now he and Drift are in an argument about the acceleration tolerances of reindeer.”

“Don’t let them test it,” Kim whispered.

The informal party broke up when the movie ended. There were hugs and ‘good nights’ and the two mech kids singing off their friends with a totally unrecognizable translated version of ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas.’ Ironhide and Hound, who was just coming off a defrag shut-down, collected the kids and took them off to the ‘Bot commissary.

Alone, finally, Kim squirmed around in Optimus’ hand and looked up at him. “How are you feeling?”

“There is no pain. As Ratchet warned, I am aware of a mild but distinct…weakness. I am not currently cleared for combat, but that is only precautionary.”

Kim nodded, patted him gently. “Do you have a few hours to run repairs?”

“I do. But I know Fixit has prepared a holiday meal. Perhaps you should not join me.”

“He’ll understand,” Kim said.

He shifted slightly. “I cannot claim I understand this festival, or that I can satisfactorily celebrate it with you.”

Kim blinked. “Oh. That’s very sensitive of you. Thank you. But it’s fine. I think…celebrating a holiday about kindness and generosity while walking out on a friend would be….The holiday is just symbols, you know.”

“This particular holiday is believed to be transcendent and holy.”

“Yeah….” Kim said, frowning. “I’m… gonna do it on purpose this time. Right? This isn’t an accident.”

“What isn’t?”

“’These cultural symbols and emotional associations are not more important to me than what is between us, or what you need right now. I choose you over this holiday, over all the holidays. I can’t…I can’t put you ahead of my job. I accept that. And I know your duty…comes first. But everything else…. You are my family, and I am committed to you. And if you need cover for a couple of hours of down time so you can rebuild protomatter, then I am grateful I can help.” 

He lifted her up to eye level. “That was lovely. Do I accept? Or make a counter proposal?”

“Neither, maybe?” she said gently. “You don’t need to have this conversation while you feel bad. It can wait until you feel better, and we aren’t sneaking off to find time for repairs.”

“That is an important point,” he said. “You are correct; I am not at my best. But there are factors you have not considered. The loss in Tanzania and the utter failure of his new weapon may make Megatron angry and more susceptible to provocation. We may not have the luxury of extended time.”

Kim’s heart sank. “Oh.”

“There are things we should say. Things I might very much regret not saying.”

Kim bit her lip. “It’s okay. Your duties have less…leeway than mine. I know you can’t…I know there are commitments you can’t make. I can live with that.”

“There are commitments I can make.”

“Is it right? To let you do this now? When you don’t feel good? Anyway-- I’ve noticed how few people you let help you. I mean personally help you. You let me do it. That says a lot. I can do something useful right now, and that’s…a lot. You don’t need to say anything.”

“Your impulse to protect me does you credit. I am not too diminished to have this conversation, however.”

He was not going to relent, and Kim couldn’t justify making him argue about it. “Okay.” She closed here eyes and braced herself.

“Kim. Thank you for spending this time with me. Thank you for each of these kindnesses. I’m so sorry-“ He broke off and paused for a moment. “I have two hours and forty-seven minutes until my next meeting. I could manage, perhaps, seven grams of replacement in that time. A tiny amount you could hide in your closed hand. Perhaps I would rather perform the Santa vigil with you, and listen to your Christmas stories.”

Kim looked up into the dark recess of the cavern ceiling. “How much could you do with twelve hours? Or twenty?”

“No, Kim. I can’t be unreachable for so long. John Keller will worry. Keller...and others.”

Kim cleared her throat, debating for just a moment longer whether to bring it up. “I’m sure Mr. Keller knows you were caught in the blast. Everyone knows. Miko knows. The sparklings know. You could take tomorrow off. Everyone will still be impressed you aren’t down for a week like Bee. Twelve hours is nothing.”

“I am on monitor duty tomorrow.”

“Yeah, but off-line isn’t like being in Siberia. You’ll still be here, and you aren’t that hard to wake up. You could do it. You could totally do it.”

“I was planning to analyze the data from the dark energon weapon.” His speech had slowed and dropped its inflection. He was, she thought, uncertain.

“Ratchet and Wheeljack are already doing that,” she coaxed gently. “I know because Wheeljack talked to Miko about the actual effect that kills little protomatter mechanisms.”

A soft click, the start of a system check. “What did he hypothesize?”

“Weirdness. He has no clue how it killed protomatter, but he thinks they might have been attempting a mind control device, not a death ray at all.”

“Nonsense.” His vents clicked up to high. “Pardon me. I must have a brief word with Wheeljack.”

Wincing, Kim folded her hands and waited. Autobot radio conversations tended to be quick. It was only couple minutes later that Optimus focused his optics on Kim’s face. “I apologize. It was rude to shift all of my attention.”

“I’m sure the weapon was complicated and horrible. And I bet Wheeljack isn’t finished yet. You don’t have to deal with whatever he figures out right now. It can wait. And you might as well deal with it later; everyone already knows you’re hurt. You could spend tomorrow in repair.”

“Kim--” The protest was tentative and incomplete.

“I know you’re scared of the humans getting scared and freaking out. This won’t do it. Hell, it’s a holiday, hardly anyone will notice. Well—” She could see the objection coming and got ahead of it. “Keller and Morshower and Mearing will notice. But none of them will draw attention to it. We’re talking about one day--and why am I even arguing with you? I’m asking as a favor. I’m asking because you trust me. Take tomorrow off.”

“I...will adjust my schedule and re-route communications to Springer and Jazz starting at oh-two-hundred hours.”

“Thank you. This….yes, this is the best Christmas present I’ve ever had.”

“Do you still want to go to Italy next Wednesday?”

“If we can, yeah. Always. Anywhere. But right now, two hours is time for a wash.” He didn’t protest, so Kim coaxed gently. “It’s called selfcare. Humans are very big on it just now. I myself shower at least once an orn. I’m almost never covered with slime.”

He clicked softly with gentle amusement.

“So? Shall we?”

“Oh,” he said. “I confess a trip to the washracks would be…lovely.”

***

To borrow a phrase from Kim’s grandmother, the sparklings made out like bandits on Christmas. They had toy cars of varying sizes, balls, puzzles, games, parts to copy, parts to incorporate, custom rollerskates, a set of shelves for each of them to store it all on, and—most wonderfully—tiny subspace pockets to carry a small possession or two in.

The last present made Christmas Day kind of quiet: Seri and Hot Rod wanted Ratchet to incorporate their new upgrades immediately, and then they had to integrate the software. There was a lot less running around and playing then either Kim or Chip had expected.

Fixit made a special Christmas lunch for the humans who were staying on base—which was most of them after the disaster that had been Thanksgiving. They had bacon and asparagus quiche, spinach salad, and cranberry scones. Real bacon, not soy, so that was _good_.

Optimus followed through with his promise to spend the day in the dim garage beyond the ‘Bot commissary, replacing lost mass and recalibrating his systems. Ratchet thought this was such an excellent idea that as soon as he finished with the children’s upgrades, he announced he was ‘celebrating Christmas’ by settling down for system maintenance, too.

Bobby was on duty in Human country, but Carly and Chip did puzzles on a folding table on the balcony. Pierre drank hot cocoa and looked at repair schematics on a tablet. Kim called home and then worked on notes. It was calm, which was nice.

At sundown, Hound collected Carly, Kim, and the sparklings for a drive around Jasper to look at the Christmas lights. He had used a satellite survey to plot the best course through the streets. Still, Jasper wasn’t very big. It didn’t take long.

The climax of the trip was three houses across the street from the funeral home that had synchronized music and strings of lights. The kids were very pleased by this, and pressed their optics to the window. It was going well—normal?—until the song switched to Josh Groban’s “Believe,” which Seri disliked. She solved the problem by hacking the wifi, changing the song to Winter Wonderland, and then taking over the light show so it would match.

Hound caught her of course, and made her pass control back to the automated program. They moved on, then, which caused minor outrage from Hot Rod, who had been innocent of tampering.

At the edge of town, Hot Rod began to lobby to be taken out to the desert to look at the stars with his new telescope external. “I am told lenses are good at looking at stars? Please, can we look at stars?”

“We don’t have clearance to go into the desert. And we don’t have clearance for you kids to leave the passenger cabin.”

“Please, Hound? Kim can give us clearance. She outranks everyone.”

Kim laughed in surprise. “Me? I don’t outrank _any_ one.”

“Kim is not in the chain of command.”

“She _is_ , though,” Seri put in.

“I’m in charge of the human dorm, sweetie,” Kim said. “That’s it.”

“Kim has a null rank for both the Humans and the Autobots,” Hound explained. “It’s so she can collect information freely and give advice without worrying about pleasing a supervisor. For example, if I were to ask Kim’s opinion about the safety and practicality of a detour to look at stars, she would not have to fear retaliation if her answer did not forward a particular agenda.”

Kim managed not to wince. The temple (or shrine or office-building, it wasn’t actually clear) of The Cube must have been awful. Sentinel Prime had been an abusive bastard, and any workplace he organized would have been a nightmare of sabotage, backbiting, and bullying.

She patted Hound’s console and said gently, “To be fair, as far as the kids are concerned, Hound and I have approximately infinite authority right now. We are the grown-ups taking care of you.”

“What about Carly,” Hot Rot protested. “She’s a grown up.”

“Oh, no,” Carly said quicky. “If Kim or a ‘Bot is here, I count as a kid. Completely.”

Kim turned in her seat and gave her a pointed look. “Unless you are in the infirmary. You count as staff. Only senior medical staff can overrule you.” That distinction was important. Although there were limits to medical authority, cooperation was not optional, and that norm included the human students working under Ratchet’s direction.

“I will request a change of itinerary if you believe it is safe, Kim.”

“I think it’s safe to drive out in the desert. I think it’s safe for the kids to get out and do some starwatching. But they stay next to you and they don’t wander around.” Kim tried to glare convincingly. “You aren’t used to traveling on unpaved dirt, and if you get rocks up your joints Ratchet will never forgive me.”

***

The sky was clear and black between the thick scatter of stars. On the mesa there was the haze of the camouflage field, and the lights of the base, so it never looked like this. Back east, of course, there was always so much light pollution the sky was a dark grey haze.

Carly got out with the kids. Sitting between them, she regaled them with stories from physics classes and Greek myths. It was all information the sparklings could have looked up for themselves—and possibly had—but sharing and discussing synchronously was as special as it was inefficient.

Hound had turned off his interior lights and rolled down the driver’s side window. The air was cool, but not cold. Kim sighed.

“Would you like to join them?”

“Nah. I’m happy here. Would you scoot the seat back a little?”

Smoothly, she slid backwards. “Like that?” Hound asked.

“Thanks.” She patted the dash. “How are you feeling?”

“Much better. Ratchet will have to make a mechanical adjustment to my replacement memory array tomorrow, and then, after ten hours of integration and a reboot, I will be ready to return to duty.”

“It’s amazing, how quickly you can repair so much.”

“Of course,” he said shortly. “We must be returned to combat readiness as quickly as possible.” The language pack presented that in a cheerful tone of light amusement.

So. That was horrible. “Do you want to talk about it?” Kim asked.

“I think I will not. There is no solution to my problem, and no decision for me to make. This war will continue, and perhaps I shall die. There will be no reprieve.”

“Hound—”

“Respectfully, my friend—and I do appreciate your offer of compassion—you cannot understand. Please do not try. Your wars are short. Human service in war usually even shorter. The deployment period for NEST is two years. _Retirement_ is possible in twenty years.”

Kim took a deep breath of the cool night air and said, “Roll up the window. The kids have really good sensors.”

“Kim—”

“Please, Hound.” It was not a request. The windows hissed up. Kim took a deep breath. “You’re right. I can’t _understand_. But your analysis is incorrect. I’ve seen the stats on possible outcomes. Thirty months is likely. Five years…the chances of the war ending approaches certainty.”

“I…concur that we will find the _Nemesis_. However, we will not bring it down. Optimus will not give the order. There is no way to destroy the warship before Megatron uses it to slag several human cities. The Decepticons hold this planet hostage. We cannot save it. But we will not betray you by deliberately sacrificing the innocent.”

“Hound—”

“Do not misunderstand me. This is not an indictment. I bless him for choosing morality, my Prime. If he asked for my reverence, I would give it willingly. For this. He is worthy. But that does not change the outcome.”

Kim knew the details of a few of the official tactical options. The human authorities, she assumed, accepted them at face value. Of course the ‘Bots knew more about orbital combat, weapons, shields…they would do their own math of course.

“Hound,” she said in a soft voice, “You’re _wrong_. The conclusions are probably accurate.”

He rocked slowly backward on his tires. “You are certain of this? Or it is a kind possibility you share to offer the comfort of hope?”

“I’m certain.” She tilted her head back and rubbed her eyes.

“What kind of certainty? If you told me in Cybertronix, would you append the marker of statistical certainty? Or of observed certainty?”

Was it observed certainty when you knew a fact others did not? Or was an event in the future still a statistical prediction? “I’m certain. But I can’t talk about this. I can’t tell you what kind of certainty.”

“It must be a human stratagem, something political, if you have been consulted.”

No. Nothing human. Kim had not been asked for her expertise. “I can _not_ talk about this. I am only telling you, you have not been told a comforting lie with bad math.”

There was a long silence. Kim kept her eyes closed. Of course, avoiding eye contact didn’t help with people who were watching your magnetic field. “You are not happy.” Hound said, finally. “You are offering me hope, but you are not hopeful.”

Kim held back her answer until she was sure she could speak evenly. “You’re right. I’m not happy. This war is too much for me.”

“Kim…I’m sorry. I did not mean—"

“I’m not talking about this anymore.”

“Kim—”

“I’m not mad. I’m just not talking about this.”

“I…will change the subject now.”

“Thank you.” Kim rubbed her sweaty hands along her thighs.

“I hear you are going to Italy.” 

“Naples,” Kim said too cheerfully. “I get to take a peek at Pompei. And then we get to update our scans of Vesuvius.”

“You do not speak Italian. Are you worried?”

“Nah. They’re used to tourists. And I’m not going to do anything dubious like wander through a strange city alone.” 

“It must be very difficult, not to be able to download language packets.” He sounded a little too sympathetic.

Kim stayed determinedly on topic. “I don’t wish we all had the same one, though. Language is such an important part of culture. And the history of Italy is in its language.”

“You will, naturally, sample the local food.”

“Well of course. Humans eat frequently.” She managed a smile.

They talked about little things until Carly and the sparklings returned to the passenger cab for the trip home. They were chatting happily about physics. Seri and Hot Rod were making fun of Newton’s Laws of Motion. Kim couldn’t quite follow why. It was very funny apparently.

When Carly and the kids scrambled out at the base of the steps, Kim stayed behind. “Can we talk for a moment?”

“Of course,” he answered easily, rolling over to the corner. “What do you wish to discuss?”

“I’m not sure how this works. If maybe being injured brought you kind of down, of if… you were depressed before the scrapletts tried to…eat you? I don’t know how worried I should be about this.”

He didn’t answer. Kim tried to wait. She made it about half a minute. “Do I need to…talk to somebody about your… _is_ it depression? Do Ratchet or Optimus know?”

A click that almost sounded like a laugh. “Do my doctor and the Prime realize my soul is malfunctioning? Yes. Everyone who approaches to overlapping distance is aware.”

“Your spark—” Kim croaked. “Is malfunctioning?”

“I’m sorry. That was not at all clear in English. My distress propagates noticeably in the corona. The disturbance is not profound enough to endanger my health.”

“Can…anybody help?”

“My situation is not urgent. And you do not realize how much … better my state of mind has been since coming to Earth. “

“That good. I’m glad.” It sounded weak.

“I am committed to Earth, Kim. I have just checked the file on human ‘depression.’ I understand your alarm, I think. But my situation is not the same. My emotions are unsatisfying and my spark is not operating at peak efficiency, but my cognition is not compromised. Yes, Ratchet has confirmed this. I have been subjected to medical interface at least once every orn since Thanksgiving.”

“So…. My friend, is there anything I can do?”

“You have already helped. Thank you for your reassurance earlier. I will accept your analysis.”

“Okay.” She patted the dash. Hound had never pointed out a sensor hub for interfacing.

“It’s getting late, Kim. You should rest.”

***

There was music playing. Was it in the hall? Did Chip have his door open?

Kim stirred sleepily and sat up. Huh. There was Reggae. Definitely. Close by. And someone was arguing.

Kim glanced at the clock. Seven thirty. It was Tuesday? Yesterday was Christmas. So…Boxing day. It would have been nice to sleep in, but Kim got up, checked to see she was decently covered by her short pajamas (if not professionally dressed), and opened the door. That was the source of the Reggae.

The outer door was open, and Steeljaw was standing there, getting yelled at by Carly. Pierre stood next to her looking confused and uncomfortable. Chip, in underware, was peeking out of his door. “Hey,” Kim said. “Early day?”

“We’re examining the protomatter samples today. Steeljaw won’t let us out,” Pierre explained softly.

Kim rubbed her face and tried to pretend she was alert and thinking clearly. “Steeljaw?”

“I’m only the messenger, I don’t give the orders,” They were playing up the 40s movie star voice, dripping class. “You’ll just have to wait, I’m afraid. There’s been an emergency. Humans are prohibited from entering ‘Bot country.”

“Steeljaw, we _live_ in ‘Bot country,” Kim pointed out.

Elegant claws tapped the floor. “This is very serious. You must stay where you are.”

“Can I ask why?” Kim pressed.

They shifted uneasily. “The base is locked down.”

Carly’s phone rang. She hastily answered and listened for a moment. “No, here too. We’re confined to the dorm…..Yeah.” She tapped off. “That was June. She’s at the gate. The base is locked down. Nobody in or out.”

Kim ducked back into her room for her own phone. She hesitated for a moment over the VOIP number she never used and then sent a text: REQUEST UPDATE. She did not take the time to find the glyph. This was good enough.

The answer from Optimus took only a moment: STAND BY.

Well. Interesting. What did ‘standing by’ entail? Kim hurriedly threw on jeans and a shirt and padded to the end of the hall across from the kitchen. Max’s habitat.

Slipstream was there, seated on the floor in the far corner, Max asleep in his lap. “Hey,” Kim said.

It was a moment before he answered. His optical lenses were dim and unfocused. “Good morning. I am currently monitoring both the orbital data and sampling Earth communications. I do not have the bandwidth for a complex conversation. I beg your pardon.”

Kim walked over slowly and squatted beside him. “You have seven communication inputs. And you can’t have a conversation at sluggish human speeds?”

“I have only four, in fact.” He paused and petted Max. His eyes focused briefly and scanned over Kim and then dulled again. “There has been in incident.”

Kim had guessed that. She said nothing.

“The infirmary energon supply was contaminated. Bumblebee was poisoned last night.”

All the air seemed to leave her at once. The sharp, cold shock of it crushed in from all directions. It felt an eternity before she could speak. “Is he alive?”

“Yes. He is still alive. Ratchet has not yet determined his prognosis.”

Oh, god. Oh, god, oh, god— “What—how--?”

“The contamination was dark energon. The outlook is not encouraging, but we have not given up hope.”

“But we can treat dark energon—” Kim protested, panic growing.

“He is not manifesting the isolated malfunctions that accompany external exposure. It is all throughout his systems. It is interfering with his spark.”

Kim rocked back onto her bottom and sat still for a long moment. Bee. He was still recovering from the combat injury to—

“Are they sure it was the fuel? He was hit by the new weapon. His protoform—”

“It was the fuel.”

Oh, god….

Kim closed her eyes. “So…’Bot country is off limits, and the humans are in the dorm waiting for the hazard to be cleaned up?”

It was a moment before he answered. “Incorrect. The humans are confined to the dorm, and the base is locked down because the poison was introduced to the medical supply by a human.”

Kim sat bolt upright. “No.”

“The culprit has already been identified. It was Sergeant Ford. He has confessed. His only regret is that Bumblebee was the victim and not his intended target.”

The sparklings—they had had upgrades yesterday, they had been in the infirmary—flashed through Kim’s mind. Ford had never been comfortable around the little mecha.

The innocent, precious sparklings. For a moment Kim thought she might be ill.

She made herself ask, though she thought she knew: “Who…who was the target.”

Slipstream’s hands stilled on Max and his optical lenses focused on Kim’s face. “Prime. Ford’s goal was to assassinate our Prime and defile the Great Matrix. He called it an abomination.”

 _Not_ the children.

Optimus.

This was too much. It was too absurd. It was too horrible.

 _One of my people did this. I should apologize._ Kim couldn’t say anything. Her arms were clinched over her belly, and her throat was locked up.

_Bee might be dying. Bee might be dying right now._

“Would you like to pet Max?” Slipstream offered.

Kim petted Max.

Max turned over and stretched out her neck.

“Human pets are softer, I think,” Slipstream said wiggling his blunt ‘fingers.’ “Do you think Max knows I am alive?”

Kim’s heart clinched. “Oh, Sweetheart. If Max has the concept _alive_ , of course she knows you’re alive. You’re her best friend.”

They stayed that way for a while, Kim overwhelmed and stunned, Slipstream too busy to grieve the betrayal properly.

Betrayal. One of the NEST unit who fought alongside them.

“Fixit is coming,” Slipstream said suddenly. “He has a briefing for the dorm residents. You need to go.”

Stiffly, Kim got up and left the cozy room full of toys and rug-covered cat gyms. She stopped for the bathroom. She collected her shoes—new slip-ons with memory foam soles, a Christmas present from Chip because she was always hurrying somewhere—and opened the outer door.

Fixit had just topped the steps. That always looked odd, with his wheels. Kim pushed the door all the way open and stepped back.

He shut it after him once he was through it.

“Good morning,” Kim said stiffly.

“It is not, my friend. It is a very bad morning. We have badly miscalculated the timeline. We are not ready.” He paused. “Everyone is in the kitchen. We should join them.”

Carly, Pierre, and Chip were seated at the table, but Maggie was standing in the doorway with her arms crossed. “What the hell, Possum,” she snapped as Fixit approached.

“Beloved, I know what you are fearing. The situation is worse. Please sit down.” The warning was chilling, but Kim found the delivery even worse. Fixit, whose light, eager voice only ever suggested or encouraged, was stern. He was giving orders.

Maggie sat. Kim sat. Chip slid her a cup of tepid, over-sugared tea.

“How’s Bee,” Carly asked quietly.

“Ratchet has not issued a prognosis yet. Bumblebee is…struggling. We have decontaminated his mechanisms as best we can.”

Pierre had his hands folded on the table. Now he bowed his head over them and asked. “Is it true? Ford did this? One of us betrayed you?”

“Was he working for the Decepticons?” Carly interrupted.

Fixit was silent for a long moment. “It would be best if I described the situation. Answering individual questions would not present a clear picture. Kim?”

Oh. Was she still in charge in the dorm? _Interesting_ , Kim thought dully. But it wasn’t interesting. It was only puzzling. If Ratchet hadn’t issued a prognosis yet, Bee was in bad shape. And the target had been Optimus. An assassin had gotten into ‘Bot country. Hell, Ford had gone into combat with Optimus last week. Nowhere was safe. Why was Fixit pretending Kim was still in charge here?

Kim realized everyone was looking at her and managed a nod. “Go ahead,” she croaked.

“Sergeant Ford was not working for the Decepticons. His neurological operations were altered by his exposure to dark energon. His actions were motivated by emotions of revulsion and hatred, rather than a coherent plan.”

“So why are we locked in here?” Carly demanded. “If we know it was _only_ Ford, we can get back to work.”

“Your conclusion is incorrect. We do not know it was _only_ Ford. We know of no other human injured by dark energon exposure, but our ignorance does not rule out the possibility. I must confess to you now: we made serious miscalculations. We did not anticipate dark energon as a source of compromise for our human allies. We had observed that direct contact caused illness, so we took steps to protect you from exposure. But since we did not realize there were other potential effects, we did not monitor carefully for…subtle exposure. It is possible there are other individuals who encountered it but did not exhibit symptoms. This was a great failure on our part. I apologize. We are trying to rectify it now.”

“Would someone who was compromised even _know_ they were compromised?” Carly asked.

“As I understand it, no. Apparently, Ford’s experience was primarily emotional. He does not seem to have questioned his motives. For this reason, everyone associated with this base must be examined.”

Kim closed her eyes. Fixit had said this was worse than she thought. This was worse.

Carly stood up and began to pace restlessly. “So, this can’t possibly work. Even if someone compromised wants to confess, they _can’t_. We’re never going to know—”

“The Matrix can discern the influence of Chaos,” Fixit said flatly.

Carly gave him an acid look. “And this counts as _chaotic_?”

“I apologize. We have broached a topic that you do not have clearance for.”

The long silence that followed rang with anger, fear, and frustration.

Kim said, “ _You_ don’t have clearance to discuss it with humans.”

Fixit turned to her imploringly. “Kim. We thought the Decepticons were the most urgent danger. Our situation facing them is desperate. How can human authorities possible understand how much worse….” He turned abruptly to Maggie. “I am sorry. I am so sorry. I did not realize—”

Maggie softened slightly. “Hush, Possum,” she took a step toward him. He flinched backward, and Maggie gasped like she’d been slapped.

The awkward pause was broken by Chip. “Sit down, Maggie. You and I and Kim need to stay here. We’ve been compromised. Everybody else needs to go into another room. In case we’re dangerous.”

There was arguing—Maggie’s protest, Carly’s angry defense of her friends, Pierre’s plea for calm. Kim let it wash over her. Compromised. The humans Optimus had brought in to acclimate his children to Earth were compromised. The humans he had invited to live in his people’s home, this tiny rudimentary refugee camp beneath the mesa, were compromised.

Chip slapped the table. “Enough. It isn’t Fixit’s fault. They didn’t look for dark energon to be a source of entry because they already knew the Ravenous Void was trying to get in through the language. They thought they had a handle on it, but it’s all gone to shit, hasn’t it? And now they have to try to….” He shuddered. “What actually is going on? How compromised are we? _Can_ they fix us? Or do we have to be locked up?”

“What are you talking about—” Carly began.

“They brought it with them,” Chip said. “Whatever made Ford do this. It isn’t just in dark energon, it’s something they brought with them. It’s getting to me and Kim because we’re learning Cybertronix and to Maggie through the math.”

“No,” Kim said quickly. “They didn’t _bring_ it. It’s not their fault. It was already here. They didn’t know--” But they had known. They had known all about Unicron. They just hadn’t thought their death god was real.

“To answer your question, we do not believe your or Maggie’s behavior has been…altered yet. But yes, it is clear we badly misunderstood the extent of the problem and how quickly it was….” He reset his vocalizer. “You and Maggie can be ‘fixed.’ Kim has already…apparently the Matrix first identified the problem in…Kim…and managed to end the… external interference.” His broad optical lenses layers spun in agitation. “Optimus did not _know_. The Matrix does not take direction from him. It does not always answer his questions. Your friends did not betray you. We only failed you.” He turned to Maggie. “I did not know. We were told very little until this morning when—I’m sorry. I am so sorry. This is a shit show.”

Staring down at the table, Chip said evenly, “I’m way angrier about this than I should be, and that is saying a lot. I would say ‘shit show’ doesn’t even begin to cover it. If that thing in my dreams is real, I sort of have an idea just how badly you have fucked everything up. This metaphor is probably going to replace that business with the orbital watchtower. How dare you—” He stopped. He unclenched his jaw. “The other humans need to leave, and Fixit needs to watch Maggie and me. In case.”

Carly reached for him. He batted her hand away sharply. “Did I fucking stutter? Get out right now. Because I do not know how much of this feeling is me and how much is that _thing_ from my nightmares. It hates you, it hates us, it wants to watch mech sparks pop and fizzle out, it thinks that will be _delicious_. So go away until the…alien pope blesses us or what the fuck ever.”

Sadly Fixit nodded. “Optimus will soon return from Building E where the Matrix is examining the military staff. It will not be a long wait.”

As the others filed out, Maggie was still protesting. “Doing math doesn’t make a person evil. This is absurd.”

“You are not evil.” Fixit said. “Of course, you are not evil, Beloved. Doing our math did not make you evil. It made you…receptive. We will fix that. You will not even notice. Kim did not notice….”

Kim pulled the kitchen door shut and walked firmly back to her room to finish getting dressed.

She had not noticed. She had not noticed feelings of anger or fear—and Raf had warned her to _look_ for them. Maybe she hadn’t had them? Maybe it hadn’t gotten that far? And whatever the Matrix had done to her the evening of that strange party dream…she had not noticed that either. It had only been an odd dream.

She washed her face and brushed her teeth. Hunger—well, probably hunger—was making her queasy. Kim dug a power bar out of her bag (since the kitchen was off limits), and settled down to worry. Had any of the other soldiers been exposed to dark energon? Was Raf in danger because he had a human brain thinking a mech language? Was Unicron actively seeking human vessels to…murder Prime and desecrate the Matrix of Leadership? Or was this just some scrap of aimless evil left over from the monster that set life on Earth evolving?

Was Chaos here and still alive? Of course he was. There was no point in trying to hope this mess away. Still, his fight with the children of Primus was 700 years early, wasn’t it? Maybe he wasn’t ready either.

Could the Decepticons be called upon to put the war aside and fight this older enemy? But no, they were making dark energon weapons. They surely couldn’t be trusted….

At three, Eject, who was guarding the outer door, called for Carly and Pierre. They didn’t come back, but only a few minutes later Maggie and then Chip were summoned.

Kim paced the hallway alone until Maggie returned, June and Fixit trailing in her wake. Maggie was crying a little. Fixit was still apologizing. “You could lie down for a while,” June suggested.

“I’m making tea,” Maggie said. Was she angry, or only impatient?

“I will make it for you,” Fixit said eagerly.

“No, thank you. I can manage tea. I can’t detect alien mind control or expel it, but I can make tea.”

“It was not your fault. You could not help it. Your species—”

“Oh, right. My species, the analog squishies who can’t do _real_ math or they get possessed by pure evil.” She fled into the kitchen. Fixit trailed after her. Kim and June trailed after him.

“You are not evil,” Fixit protested helplessly.

Maggie dug through her box of tea. “Damn right I’m not. I wasn’t a danger to anyone. I wouldn’t have _hurt_ anyone. It was only math.”

“We could not risk that your firewalls might be breached. If your firmware were to be overwritten—”

Maggie froze. She turned around. She looked at Fixit for a moment, and then went back to making tea. “It wasn’t real. It was only math.”

“The Matrix did not take away your math. It changed your field slightly, so you would not be noticeable.” 

“Noticeable to _what_?” She stared at the electric kettle. “That wasn’t real.”

“We did not want to think so. It did not seem like it could be.”

Giving up on the hot water, Maggie sat down at the table. Fixit slowly crept up beside her, lowered his frame, and settled his head gently on her lap. “I would never have hurt you. _Nothing_ could make me hurt you.” 

“I know,” he said. “You loved me when I did not know who I was or who I would be. I love you whoever you are.”

June took Kim by the forearm and drew her several steps down the hall. “Did you know?” she whispered.

Kim had a hard time meeting her eyes. “I knew enough to figure it out. But we were all worried about something else….”

“There is something _else_?”

“We weren’t sure…learning an alien language might cause…the human brain is designed to work with human languages. No one had ever tried an alien language.”

“And it could have caused a mental illness?” she said doubtfully.

Kim winced. “Or messed up other parts of our brains. But…if mecha can use an analog language, using a digital language wouldn’t have killed us. I mean, it wasn’t _likely_ something bad would happen. It was just a science fiction guess.”

“But so were aliens.” June took a deep breath. “So you and Chip….”

“It was worth the risk. _That_ risk.” Kim remembered the first linguist they’d interviewed in France. “To us.”

“But what actually happened—?” June was cut off by the outer door opening again. Chip, holding tightly to Dr. Nomura’s arm, came back to the dorm. Chip paused to look at them. Dr. Nomura gently tugged him toward the door to his room.

Going for calm, Kim went down the hall to them. Chip let go of Dr. Nomura to grab Kim by the shoulders. “You are so beautiful,” he said. He let go of Kim and hugged June. “Thank you, thank you,” he murmured. “I love you so much.”

“Dr. Chase,” Dr. Nomura said dryly, “appears to have had a religious experience.”

Kim pushed down a spike of worry. Chip’s pupils were tiny dots. “Shower or bed?” she asked.

“Starch,” Chip croaked. “Like cookies. Lots of cookies. And water. And potato chips.”

Dr. Nomura and June looked at each other and shrugged.

Kim’s phone buzzed.

A meeting in the infirmary had appeared on her schedule. It was marked URGENT.

Kim looked at Chip. She turned back toward the kitchen. “I—”

June sighed. “We’re fine here. Go on.”

She should have walked fast. She should have _run_. It felt like she was slogging through mud and trying to see through fog. Was this shock? Was finding out you had almost been possessed by an alien destruction god a reason to be in shock? It had been months ago, after all. However bad it almost was, she should be over it, right?

Maybe she was only worried about what Optimus thought of her now. Even if he wasn’t personally put off, making commitments to the spawn of hell was probably not allowed for high priests.

Optimus was in the infirmary, huddled with Ratchet over a berth holding a motionless shape. Bumblebee. He was tethered to an external console rather than to Ratchet. Kim glanced at the monitor. Electropulse variance was over seven percent. The spark graph…wasn’t showing any color or wave patterns that looked familiar to Kim at all.

Optimus turned and crouched as Kim approached. “I am sorry,” he said immediately. “I am very sorry. I do not have time to enumerate the catalog of mistakes I have made, or make amends for the damage those mistakes have caused your people or this planet. I need your help, and while I cannot expect you to forgive, I humbly ask you to delay your condemnation until later.”

Kim wasn’t sure how to take that. Uncertainly, she said. “I can see you have a lot of experience with official apologies.”

“When we are out of this emergency, I will make a personal apology as well.”

“Why are you apologizing to me? _I_ know you didn’t understand what was going on. None of us knew what we were looking at—I’m still not sure—” Kim rubbed her hands together. “What do you need me to do? What’s going on?”

He scooped her up and rose smoothy, exiting the infirmary and retreating around the curve of the tunnel before answering. “None of Ratchet’s interventions have slowed Bumblebee’s decline. The Matrix has also failed. We have exhausted our options—” He broke off, shifting to rebalance Kim as she curled forward and nearly fell off his hand.

Bee. Bee. Bee.

He was going to die.

He’d been poisoned, and he was going to die.

Kim gasped, realized she had forgotten to breathe, realized that Optimus was watching her anxiously, realized there wasn’t time to grieve now. “What do I—what do you want me to do?”

“I would like to send you into town with Jazz, to collect Raf.”

Oh. God. “Are—are—are you sure? I know he’d want to say good-bye. But. This will be so hard for him, and he’s so young. Are you _sure_?”

Optimus stared at Kim for a long moment. “You misunderstand, I think. I am not sending for Raf so that he can say good-by. I am sending for him because I hope he can help.”

Kim took a breath. “He’s a human child. I’m not sure how you think him having a sparkling soul is going to help, but if he is aware of Bee’s field, he’s going to feel _that_ ,” Kim gestured in the direction of the infirmary, “and he’s not a mech. How is he going to handle perceiving whatever is happening to Bee? Even if he wants to be here-“ and of course, yes Raf would want to be here, “he doesn’t—”

Kim stopped, suddenly confused. All the little sensors on Optimus’s helm had ducked behind their shielding plate. His optics reset. “Kim,” he said slowly, “Have you concluded that Rafael…is hosting a sparkling?”

“Yes?” Optimus stared at her, optical lenses motionless. “I--I’ve seen the video? The Allspark was making babies just randomly, dropping sparks just anywhere, bringing things to life.” She stopped awkwardly. “Raf was in the area. And a human body can hold a magnetic field. And…he speaks Cybertronix. And his field is as big as a mech’s—”

Optimus was shaking his head slowly. “No, Kim. Rafael is not harboring the soul of a child spawned by Allspark. Rafael is carrying the Allspark itself. If there is any chance of saving Bumblebee, or, indeed, any of us, we will need his help.”

Kim rubbed her hands over his face. “How can that…? How can that have happened?“

“We do not know. It is, I suppose, a miracle.”

_A miracle._

Kim tried to calm down. She tried to breathe normally. She tried to focus. “Does…he know?”

“Yes, Kim. Rafael is aware he carries within him all that remains of The Cube.” He paused. “The integration has been a slow process. There is a great deal he does not…understand. I wish we had had even a little more time.”

How many times had Kim seen Optimus defer to Raf? Accept that Raf had a right to judge him? She had thought it was sympathy for the difficult position an innocent child had been thrust into. But no. The eleven year old flesh creature was literally the Prime’s equal. “This…explains a lot.”

“We have told him Bumblebee has been injured. Will you go with Jazz to retrieve him? He should be told—in person—before he arrives and perceives the state of Bumblebee’s field and how desperate the situation is. I know it is asking…so much….”

“Okay,” Kim said. “Okay. Yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Martha had to nudge me through this one. I kept leaving things out....
> 
> And yes, 11 years later, I am still annoyed at a 200 million dollar movie that spent two and a half hours trying to use a relic shard that brings back the dead to solve puzzles and go to exotic place so they could figure out how to...bring back the dead. Not to mention how TFP never even tried to explain how Raf could understand Bee.


	9. Behind, before, within, below

Jazz spoke for the first time when they turned onto the highway. “You doin’ okay, there?”

Kim shook her head. “It’s a lot.”

“Yeah, it sure is a lot,” he agreed.

“Does it, um, bother you? Having a human inside you now that you know we can be…hacked?”

“Optimus gave me the scan files from before and after the Matrix blessed Chip and Maggie. I can’t make any sense of it. If there’s a pattern, I can’t find it. And finding patterns is my job.”

Kim shifted, acutely aware of all the places her weight was resting against him. He was probably wondering if he was transporting a demon. “Sorry,” she said.

“I’ll tell you what really worries me: there were no problems before you became more like…us. Our language, whatever way it changed you, is what made you vulnerable. That’s….that’s crazy. Kim, how can our language have done that?”

“Would, um, _It_ speak your language?”

“We have no idea.”

“Right,” she said, putting her face in her hands.

“Kim, it’s not like we didn’t look. We’ve been scanning. We looked before we sent the Allspark. We looked when we sent Bee and Cliffjumper to search for the Cube team. Ironhide and I are paranoid—we’ve been checking to see if there was any way Earth was off the bell curves and any sign that the life on Earth was being interfered with. The only thing—the _only_ thing—that seemed unusual was how much life there was and how fast it evolved, and even that wasn’t statistically significant.”

“I…guess that’s good to know. That he didn’t seem to be…running things.” Or he had just done a great job of hiding his influence.

“Can I ask you? What is It like? I mean, you….”

“It was _like_ a bad dream. I mean, a really bad dream I had a lot. But not worse than dreams can be. I thought it was culture shock or stress or how awful learning a new language is.” Kim bit her lip. “Big. Angry. Hungry.”

“Devourer of Worlds.”

“Yeah,” Kim sighed.

“We have to find him.”

Kim straightened. “What? He’s _here_ , right, that’s the point.”

“He can’t be the whole planet. He can’t be made of rock. He’s got to be somewhere. Deep, probably, since human activity hasn’t found him. On the other hand, he’s influenced you enough to stop you from noticing energon. Perhaps you just don’t…mine where he is.”

“The energon thing. It has to be him.” Kim touched her bracelet, remotely surprised to find she was actually wearing it.

“Yeah, that has to be him.”

Kim sighed.

They stopped at Knock Out Burger. Kim had hardly eaten today, and Raf was a growing boy. Well, growing host to a sacred alien consciousness. While they waited for the order, she was struck by a new, frightening thought: “Can you just leave? The planet, I mean? Is energon really so rare you have to stay and fight It for it?”

“Running away and leaving Earth’s energon to the Decepticons was a bad idea. But it isn’t an option at all now. We can’t leave. The Allspark is merged with a human.” He paused. “But that was why most of us stopped worrying: Humans could not be the, um, tools of Evil if a relic of Primus found one of them worthy.”

“Oh. I can see that, yeah. So ever since you’ve met Raf--”

“Well…. At first, Raf was only classified as a low-priority, non-hostile anomaly. We are tracking four thousand, six hundred and twenty-two of them. Raf himself took his existence for granted until _you_ started asking him difficult questions.”

“Oh,” Kim said.

When they got to the house, Raf was already waiting outside. He got in, glanced at Kim, glanced at the bag of food. “Is he still alive?”

“Yes,” Kim said. “But he’s…not doing well. He may die.”

Jazz headed out of the neighborhood and picked up speed.

“Was there combat today? They wouldn’t let us come to the base, and then Jack and Miko got brought in. But I wasn’t.”

“There wasn’t combat. Bee was poisoned with dark energon.”

“Oh. I…I see. A spill?”

“No, it was in the fuel supply. He was in the infirmary, and the infirmary supply was contaminated.”

“Oh. That’s… bad.”

Kim glanced out Jazz’s window. They were passing the strip mall, coming up on the MartMart. She cleared her throat. “Ratchet and the Matrix can’t….do anything. They’re hoping you’ll know something.” Picked up the take-out bag and handed it to him. “You probably want to eat.”

Wordlessly, he took the two hot dogs out of the bag and passed one to Kim. She managed three or four bites before feeling ill.

Jazz was on the open road now, the mesa that hid most of the army base growing larger in the windshield.

***

How had Kim not guessed about Raf? None of the mecha treated him like a child. He crossed the yellow line without waiting for permission and Ratchet stepped out of the way so he could climb up the berth to stand beside Bumblebee’s motionless form.

Raf looked up at the monitors, studying each of the readings thoughtfully. After a long time, he said, “I kinda want to ask how it happened, but it doesn’t matter, does it?”

“No,” Optimus said. “There is no comfort in understanding the details. Rafael. I must ask…is it possible? Do you have enough control to pass the Allspark to Bumbebee? It would save him—”

“No. I cannot pass the Allspark to Bee.” He blinked back tears and rubbed his eyes. “Even if I could settle it into his spark casing, there isn’t enough coherence here to do it _twice_. You don’t understand—”

“My friend, I understand that the situation cannot remain as it is. The burden on Rafael’s body cannot be sustained much longer—”

“I can manage long enough.”

“This would save you both,” Optimus was at his most persuasive: soft voice, respectful attention, body angled forward like a human being earnest. Voice still gentle, he switched to Cybertronix.

Kim couldn’t follow what he said, but Raf was unmoved. “I’m not sacrificing anyone,” Raf announced. “If we do it my way, we can save Bee, the Earth, the Allspark, and even maybe some of the Decepticons.”

Optimus tilted his chin, putting Raf in range of his sonic scanner. “The Decepticons?”

“Some will surrender to the Allspark if it demands it.”

Optimus shook his head. “They will not surrender to a human.”

“Yeah. I’ve had to come up with a new plan.” Raf bit his lip, looking uncertain for the first time. “It’s…more creative than I’d like, and we have to hurry.”

“Very well,” Optimus relented. “How are we to proceed?” 

“It’s going to be…complicated. I think the only way to do this quickly and without hurting anyone is to hold a Unification. And I don’t think that rite just happens by itself.”

“No. Unification is preceded by Reconciliation.”

Raf nodded. “You will lead Reconciliation, then.”

“Lead? Not provide?” Optimus drew back slightly. “I will Reconcile…with you?”

“To, me. Yes. We don’t have a lot of time. I don’t have any other ideas. So, yes, you will Reconcile to me, Optimus Prime.” He turned back to Bumblebee and ran his hand along the motionless helm. “Will an hour be enough time to recall the deployed personnel?”

“We’ll begin preparing immediately,” Optimus said, withdrawing.

Raf stayed where he was for a moment, leaning his weight against Bumblebee’s helm. Then—carefully, Kim could see he was shaking—he climbed down and walked back to Jazz, who was still in alt, parked just beyond the yellow line.

Kim followed him. What else was there to do.

“I need to speak to Hound, I think,” Raf said. “Would you call him for me?”

“You have your phone,” Jazz pointed out.

Raf shook his head. “It’s not an order, and if it comes from me directly, it will feel like one.” He opened the passenger door and retrieved the cup of soda he’d left behind. He sipped methodically while they waited the three minutes it took for Hound to come speeding in from the Bridge.

Hound folded down into a box and—very formally, with all the humility markers—gave his name in Cybertronix and started an apology.

“What are you doing?” Raf asked, peering at the featureless cube.

Kim understood none of the answer.

“Seriously?” Raf said. “Maybe you better explain that in English….”

“You are demanding our Reconciliation. I am preparing to beg for mercy. If that will help.”

“I’m not demanding--” Raf protested. “Well, _I am_. But not because I’m angry.” He took a deep breath. “I’m going to need protomatter. Like, a lot of it. And if we get it like we did to gestate the sparkings, that takes hours to get in the right….mood. And not everybody can do it. And if I ask Ratchet to harvest it surgically, that’s pretty serious physical trauma. And it will also take hours anyway, and we don’t have time. But if I’ve got you all tranced, and _ask_ , then the, um, donations can be kind of sloughed off.”

Slowly, Hound transformed back into root form. He sat down beside Jazz’s alt. “I’m not sure that will work,” he said. “Not to contradict you but… Why do you think it will work?”

“Of course, it will work.” Raf waved a hand. “That’s the easy part.”

Hound did not press for an explanation.

Kim thought about a room full of mecha somehow ‘sloughing off’ bits of their internal organs. “What’s the hard part?” she asked.

“Using it to save Bee.”

“Um,” Kim paused, debating whether to finish the thought, decided she’d better. “Optimus and Chromia were injured. They’ve recently lost protomatter—”

Raf shook his head. “I can’t use theirs anyway.” He frowned and counted on his fingers. “Seven, I think. I hope it’s enough. It will be enough.” He looked like a little boy. Little boys didn’t give orders to alien war machines. Kim sat down beside him and closed her eyes.

Hound said, “If we did include Indictment, it might actually be easier for Prime. It would make the confession part of Reconciliation a lot shorter.”

“That’s an idea,” Jazz said. “But who could do it? I mean, to be authentic, it should be somebody really low caste.”

Raf put down his empty cup. “I don’t even know who that would be,” he said.

“Fixit or Bulkhead. Arguably maybe Slipstream.” Jazz clicked softly. “Slipstream can’t sing worth scrap. Bulkhead is Prime’s Bodyguard, officially. There is no ritual context where that works.”

Hound asked Fixit to come join the meeting.

“We’re holding Unification,” Hound explained when he arrived. “If we do the full ritual cycle, we need someone to sing the demand for justice. Are you interested?”

Fixit’s head pulled back slightly in surprise. “I am not quarreling with anyone, let alone everyone. Why would I do it?”

Hound answered in Cybertronix. Fixit’s antennae retracted slightly. “Tell Kim that,” he said flatly.

It was Jazz who answered. Slowly, he said, “He wants Fixit to sing a demand for justice…to Prime...for Functionism. And Resource Allocation. And the war.” A soft growly noise, maybe protomatter rather than voice. “He’s going too far. Why not just record that and send it to Megatron?.”

“This isn’t about the Decepticons,” Raf said. “This is about authentically facing your history and taking collective responsibility for it. Your history is exploitation, cruelty, and war.”

“All of that is true,” Jazz conceded. “Optimus Prime didn’t start any of it. I’m not sure you remember—”

“I don’t _remember_ anything,” Raf said. “I didn’t have an ‘I’ to remember things with then. And maybe I’m judging this with human morals now, and that isn’t fair.”

“I won’t do it,” Fixit said. “If you have to have this part of the ritual, I am sorry. But I couldn’t do it authentically. I mean…literally anyone else. Sentinel Prime. Alpha Trion. The Assignment Committee. The Justice Committee. But I cannot sing Indictment against Optimus Prime and mean it.”

“It would make it easier for him, I think.” Fixit looked away and Hound tried another tack. “You could sing in an Earth language, if that would make it more palatable. Ironically, they have many pieces that would accomplish a presentation of grievance.”

Fixit shook his head. “It isn’t just that he saved me. He respected my autonomy, even when it wasn’t…convenient. He is Prime. It only takes a moment to override an hysterical mech.” He looked at their faces. “He did not do it. I am not saying the ritual is inappropriate. But I, myself, cannot accuse him of injustice.”

There was a long, sad silence. Raf said, “I may be wrong about this, but the Humans could have a case for injustice: the Autobots sent the Allspark here, and then they brought the whole war.”

“Interesting,” Hound said. “Clearly true. If that’s the issue, though, is it the sort of thing that supports Unification? And if it does, is it going to matter that Kim can’t ๆα?”

ๆα was the part where the protomatter came out and…danced. And tangled. Kim’s skin—salty, damp, acidic—should surely not be groping protomatter. Kim closed her eyes. “You know I’ll do anything to help, but…if not wanting to do it disqualifies…I can’t pretend I don’t want Autobots to be here.”

“Never mind,” Jazz said. “Prime appreciates the offer, but he declines.”

“Ohthankgod,” Kim murmured.

Raf hunched up. “Never mind then. It’s an optional part of the ritual anyway. Another problem, though. I’ve never done this before. I don’t think there is a—you know, a song for this.”

“The word you want is ‘liturgy,” Hound said. “No. The…The Cube didn’t sing. There are no songs for you. And it would be awful--”

Raf made a face. “I won’t sing any of _his_ high priest songs. Even if I could.” He said he had no ‘memories,’ but Kim wondered what Raf knew about Sentinel Prime.

“No,” Hound agreed quickly. Not that. 

Raf sighed, pushed up his glasses. “Even if we could adapt…something, I can’t sing in Cybertronix. And I have to sing. I have to sing something so beautiful, mecha will willing share their substance with an alien.” He shook his head.

“Aw, that part’s easy,” Jazz said. “Bee’s been teachin’ you songs for months.”

“He’s right,” Hound said. “We thought, perhaps, you might need a ceremony for…separation at some point. Bee made sure you could sing.”

Raf closed his eyes. “Oh, Bee.” He turned and leaned hard into Hound. Kim, feeling helpless, patted his shoulder.

“Kim,” Jazz said. “It would be best if the other humans…we don’t have time to answer their questions. They don’t have any idea about Raf. I think it’s better that way, don’t you?”

“Ugh. Okay. Right.” Kim fluffed her hair and straightened her shoulders. “Right. I’ll go…not explain.”

It didn’t turn out to be hard: Chip and Maggie were asleep. The others—while curious—immediately agreed that coming uninvited and unbriefed to an alien religious ritual would be (as June put it) ‘tacky.’

Kim was tempted, for a moment, to stay with them. She didn’t want to intrude. She didn’t want to witness—whatever it was they were asking of Optimus. She didn’t want to think about Raf, hosting an alien relic.

A lot of Raf was a human kid. No other humans knew he was doing this. Did Kim want him to do it alone?

If he pulled this off and... took protomatter from a bunch of different mecha and…somehow used them to save Bee….somehow…shouldn’t a human witness that? Shouldn’t she be there for him if it didn’t work?

When Kim came out onto the balcony, the assembly area was already crowded with mecha. Between patrol, recharge, and training with the military, ‘Bot country was usually pretty quiet. Now it seemed packed with huge bodies. Even the sparklings were there—they were clinging like baby monkeys to Windblade who was stationed beside the entrance to the outer tunnel.

Everyone was in root form, roughly arrayed facing the balcony. They were eerily quiet, watching Raf, who sat on the top step. Kim handed him a water.

He took a couple of swallows and set the bottle down.

“Is there anything I can do?” Kim asked. The words were swallowed by the quiet hum of mech operation and the silence of their watchful optics.

“Stay up here, out of the way. Even if it looks scary.”

Kim nodded.

There was a shuffling at the entry to the ‘Bot commissary. Someone was making his way toward the front. It was tall, but Kim didn’t recognize—

Kim had never seen a mech un-armored, except for the sparklings. Sometimes a single panel was removed for repairs, but that was all. They never took off the bright plating or even put down most of their weapons.

Optimus had removed most of his helm, the heavy shoulder plating, the thick sheets that normally covered hips and thighs, the dorsal guards on his servos.

He was still large. The curved inner carapace was matte, like brushed nickel, not mirror-bright like the sparklings. Without the thick helm, every small antenna and sensor node on his cranium was visible. His movement was noticeably quieter.

The mecha parted, sliding aside to let him pass. When he reached the front of the group, Raf stood up, straightened his glasses, and nodded. “Everyone is here. Are you ready?”

“I am,” Optimus answered.

He gestured at Prime’s altered form. “Is this Solis Prime, putting aside her arsenal to treat with Prima? Or is this a human story, Ishtar at the door to the Underworld?”

“This is my acknowledgement that weapons of war are a blasphemy.”

Raf nodded, straightened self-consciously, and glanced around, seeking seeking Jazz toward the front. “We’d better do it then. Do I say something? To start it?”

“No,” Optimus said. “I begin.”

“Okay.”

The song was very quiet. It was not a melody Kim had heard before. It was tentative, each word careful and clear. She had assumed the Reconciliation song would be apologetic. It seemed, instead, sad. Surely, it was beautiful, but hearing it tore at Kim. Optimus had stripped himself of his armor, his perfect paint nanites, his weapons. He had humbled himself to beg.

His voice grew louder, resonating off the stone walls. The melody grew more complex. The words tumbled like water, swelling and sliding away, ringing in the stone room, echoing a little in the heights of the ceiling. Optimus sang and sang, uncovered sensors focused on Raf.

There was a refrain of some kind, a section that repeated. The fourth time, Chromia joined in. She stepped up beside Optimus, folded out an arm cannon, detached it, and set on the floor. The song swelled again, Jazz’s clear, bell-like voice twining in a syncopated harmony.

At the top of the stairs, Raf gripped the railing tightly with one hand and wiped his eyes with the other. “And we…will all…be one,” he whispered. He didn’t have the melody, but the rhythm hit in an open spot in the larger song. An answer.

The song was flowing from twenty mecha now. Kim could hear a background counterpoint of protoform vibration, not quite harmonizing. Ironhide transformed through his alt and folded into a box.

“And we will be. We will be one.” The English somehow _fit_ , hooking onto the melody. Bee had taught him to sing—not for this song, but he must have known Raf would be involved in a ritual—and he was prepared to improvise. Raf was clear and on key, blending with the alien tune. “And we will be. We will be one.”

Blaster and Strongarm dropped into their consolidated forms. The sparklings had climbed down from Windblade and were dancing.

“And we will be. We will be one.” The line Raf was singing was a gloss of a formal blessing. Kim spared a fleeting regret for her linguist, who was crashed in the dorm, recovering from attempted mind control (recovering from aborted demon possession). Chip would be pissed that he missed this. Kim did not record it for him.

Everyone was singing now, and the wall of sound was physically palpable, a rhythm slightly faster than Kim’s heartbeat. The bones in her temples seemed to vibrate.

Optimus, with large sections of armor missing, had a hard time transforming, and his final cube was lopsided.

Still clinging to the railing, still singing, moving like he was under water, Raf made his way down the steps. He went right up to Optimus and leaned forward, brushing his forehead against the featureless bulk. For a moment, the song seemed to pause.

Optimus unfolded like a flower and his protomatter rose slowly, uncoiling tentatively. And the—

The rhythm of the song bounced off the stone walls and the layers of melody made a tangled echo in the dark cavern above. The gathered Autobots closed up into their smallest forms and then folded back and poured forth waterfalls and ropes and swaying blades of glittering protomatter.

Kim could barely see. Indoors, the stary fronds reflected the lights like a hundred spinning disco balls. It was all rainbows, in all directions. She gasped, unable to process it all.

Through the shifting branches, Kim could see Raf. He was dancing with the sparklings, the three of them easily weaving in and out of the twining fronds of living metal. For a moment, Kim wondered why the babies hadn’t joined in the Unification before remembering that their T-cogs weren’t turned on. But that was all right. They knew how to dance.

Riveted, trying to look everywhere at once, trying to make out even a word of the song, Kim didn’t notice the Matrix had opened until her hair was already standing up and a strange warmth was wrapped tightly around her.

Kim panted, finding it hard to think through the sudden heat, wanting to see _them_. “Look who decided to show up,” she growled.

If the sacred dead that haunted the Matrix heard, they ignored her.

A quiet settled over the cavern. The dance stopped, and the shifting rainbows reflected from the protomatter slowed and came to rest. Raf was standing in the middle of them. He turned slowly, looked up at Kim. “I have to sing,” he said.

“I’ve heard you do it,” Kim said. Her voice seemed thin and swallowed by the silence. “You can sing.”

He closed his eyes and the warmth of the Matrix was joined by…something just as large, but simpler. Raf tipped his head back and sang.

_To be humble, to be kind  
It is the giving of Peace in your mind.  
To a stranger, to a friend,   
To give in such a way that has no end. _

_We are love, we are one  
We are how we treat each other when the day is done  
We are peace, we are war,   
We are how we treat each other and nothing more_.

Raf was standing next to a heap of folded metal and glistening protomatter that was probably Strongarm. He reached out a hand, and a frond of silver rose in a mirroring movement. Raf cupped his palm and a delicate strand formed a bulb about the size of golf ball dropped off. He didn’t catch it so much as let it splash into his hand.

_To be bold, to be brave  
Is in the thinking that the heart can still be saved._

Still singing, Raf made his way through the press of swaying—Kim clamped down on the thought ‘ _internal organs_.’ 

The heap of green armor presided over by a small weeping willow of silver filagree had to be Hound. Raf reached out. Several thin fronds of protomatter braided together, bunched at the tip, and dropped a splash of silver into Raf’s outstretched hands.

_And the darkness can come quick. The danger’s in the anger, and hanging on to it._

Eject was small. His protoform was not much bigger than a corgi. Raf had to squat down to take the little glittering lump he offered.

Arcee’s protoform stretched upward, branching like a tree or a river delta. Raf’s voice shook as he sang to her. Her gift glistened like a cluster of soap bubbles.

Raf worked his way through the maze of unstructured bodies, stopping before some of the mecha to take what was offered. 

When the song ended, the tall cavern of the assembly area was silent except for Raf’s steps as he came back to the foot of the stairs. “Kim?” he called weakly, “Can I have my water.”

Kim grabbed his bottle and charged down the steps as fast as gravity would take her. “Are you all right?” she gasped, dropping to her knees and holding out the bottle.

“I don’t think I’m finished,” he whispered, his eyes filling with tears. He reached for the bottle, realized his hands were full of swirling, metallic silk. 

Kim tilted the bottle toward him. He braced it with his forearms and sucked down half of what was left. He pushed it away and tipped his head back, panting, wrinkling his nose to get his glasses back into position.

“Raf,” Kim said, timidly, “If you need to rest—”

He shook his head. “I have to sing. It thinks it’s a bunch of different people, not one thing. And it’s not built to be…outside of bodies. No carapace. No seals. It has to change. It’s transformer…I thought it would…change. But it doesn’t have the part that tells it how to be what it needs to be…? I don’t know the English word—”

“T-cog,” Kim said.

“Yeah. There’s no T-cog. I have to teach it a little more.” He cleared his throat, motioned for more water. “I can’t think of any songs.”

“Are you allowed to use the karaoke machine?”

“Oh. Yeah. I guess… Do you know how to run it?”

Jazz’s voice answered. “It’s on the wifi. Here you go.”

The intro to “Higher Love” echoed from the speakers in the next cavern. Raf managed to stand. He took a deep breath. He tipped back his head. “ _Think about it. There must be higher love_.”

He sang to the handfuls of glistening protomatter he clutched in an awkward mass against his chest. It shimmered and wrapped around hands, sliding on like silk gloves. The gloves went up his arms, sliding under his sleeves, peeking out at the collar like long underwear. Was it so black it reflected like a mirror? Or was it rainbow-colored? None of it ever seemed to be in shadow….

Kim felt a stab of worry as the silver film spread up Raf’s neck. “He’s human,” Kim whispered to it, in case it could understand. It probably couldn’t—this puddle of protomatter didn’t have a processor or audial sensors any more than it had a T-cog. “He…needs to breathe.”

Raf ignored the strands as they spread over his face, reached lacy fingers into his mouth, frosted his eyelashes.

Kim held her breath.

_Things look so bad everywhere  
In this whole world, what is fair?_

Raf’s eyes went silver. Kim squeaked and reached out, but there was no place to touch him. Silver runners were up the sides of his face and twining threads through his hair.

But Raf was unafraid and still singing.

_Worlds are turning, and we're just hanging on  
Facing our fear, and standing out there alone _

Jazz and Optimus were both singing softly, now. Optimus sang in English, Jazz took the translated part Bee had sung before the getting-to-know-you party. There was an on-key hum, too, that seemed to come from several sources. 

Kim realized she was shaking a little.

_Bring me a higher love_.

The song wasn’t quite over when Raf broke off suddenly. Gagging and curling inward, he silently coughed out a flood of silver. Before Kim could panic, he was panting and holding a smooth, mirrored ball in his hands, one last thread retreating from his face to disappear seamlessly into the mass. Raf laughed and hugged the wad to him. It was slightly smaller than a basketball and clearly heavy.

In the far room, the karoke machine turned off. Jazz started to transform, made it mostly into alt, and crunched to a halt. “Sorry,” he murmured. “I’m going to need a few more minutes.”

Raf shook his head. “’S okay. I just gotta take this to Bee now.” He stood up unsteadily. The sphere in his arms dissolved into a snake, crawled up his arm, and settled around his shoulders like a stole made of chrome chainmail.

“Okay. Okay,” Raf said. Stiffly, slowly, he skirted around the splayed mecha. The forest of trees and waterfalls resembled a very clean scrapyard. Some of the protoforms had collapsed into lax puddles that looked like pools of mercury or spilled pudding. Raf had to watch where he put his feet.

When he cleared the gathering, Raf plodded toward the infirmary. Kim followed, not quite sure what to do. She wanted to help. Touching him seemed like a bad idea. The thing he was carrying was –what even was it? How would it react if Raf were interfered with?

They had made it about half way when Raf said, “Okay,” and sat abruptly on the smooth stone floor. “I need a few minutes, too.”

Kim got down beside him and held out the last of the water. Raf gulped what was left in the bottle and then held out his free hand. His metal cape flowed down his arm and formed into a squat cylinder. “You go ahead and take this to Bee. I’ll be along in a few minutes.”

Kim hated herself for hesitating. She hated herself for being afraid. The cylinder didn’t look unfriendly.

“It’s okay,” Raf said. “It will know what to do. All you have to do is carry it to Bee.”

Kim forced herself to reach out—

It coiled around her hand, squeezing like a quick handshake, and raced up her arm like—

Before she could process what it was like, it was curved around her shoulders, heavy, hard.

It was a little lighter than Max. It was definitely smaller. This was just like taking Max for a walk. Right?

It still felt very heavy and huge. Kim watched it nervously out of the corner of her eye.

She walked as fast as she could and still keep her shoulders smooth. She didn’t want to jostle…it. Or scare…it.

Climbing up Bumblebee’s berth without moving her shoulders slowed her down horribly, but at last she was standing at his shoulder junction, balanced comfortably on two of the metal supports. As far as she could tell, the telemetry screens didn’t show any improvement. Bee’s optics were dark and still.

“Okay,” Kim said hopefully to the…creature. “We’re here.”

It didn’t seem to respond.

Damn.

Kim reached up and tried to lift one end. It was floppy and warm, a little like a cat. It seemed solid now, but she had seen this stuff flow like water. She had the terrible thought of it popping like a water balloon and splashing—

Kim squatted slowly, leaning her shoulders in toward Bee’s shoulder. It slid off like a snake, sliding along the yellow armor until it found the wide neck seam. Kim could see the cabling inside. Fracturing into a thousand tiny threads, Raf’s protomatter ball dove inside and disappeared into the darkness.

Kim took three shaky steps back, so she was beside Bee’s head, and sat down on one of the hard, narrow supports. She breathed in.

Should she pray?

To whom? Or what?

Had the Autobots been praying to Raf?

_Oh, please. Please, save Bee. Please, save Raf._

She looked up at the screens. His spark pulse variance was an unsustainable seven percent. The diagram of his spark activity…didn’t look anything like any diagram Kim had ever seen. Bad or good, she couldn’t tell, but it wasn’t normal.

And then, suddenly, it _was_. Kim couldn’t read distress or struggle, the details meant nothing to her, but the outline and colors were recognizably a mech spark.

Pulse variance was three. It was two-point-eight. It was two-point-five.

It stayed two-point-five. Kim was still staring at it when she heard the heavy tread of a big mech crossing the yellow line. The pace was slow, and Kim had to look up to identify Ratchet. He was carrying Raf cupped in his servos.

Ratchet set Raf on Bee’s chest. He fit, mostly. Bumblebee wasn’t a large mech, but Raf was a small boy. Raf patted Bee once and closed his eyes. Bee’s eyes lit, then darkened again with a protoform sigh.

A stream of quicksilver flowed uphill out of the gaps in Bee’s main vent and gathered itself into a ball next to Raf.

“I have an incubator sack,” Ratchet offered. Kim wondered what he meant, but Raf apparently knew.

“It’s not going to integrate external parts,” he said without opening his eyes. “It doesn’t need an incubator. Just put it in a bucket with some energon.”

“And some raw materials jell and pulverized scrap metal, I assume?”

“Oh. Yeah. Great idea. It’s going to be huge. It’s going to take _years_.” He patted Bee again. 

“Ratchet, is Raf all right?” Kim asked.

“Dehydrated and exhausted. I sent his scans to the dorm. Optimus is fetching Nurse Darby now.”

Oh, good. Someone who knew how human bodies worked. Wonderful. Kim eased down off the berth and went to fetch the human first aid kit—two EMT boxes kept in a small refrigerator. By the time Optimus arrived with June (maybe it should have been Dr. Nomura, but most of his actual work had been on the application of robotics to prosthetics, not family medicine, and June surely had more experience with first aid), Ratchet had placed the kit on a portable table and set the height so that a human could stand on that instead of the berth supports.

Optimus did a long scan of the figures on the berth before stepping back, pausing to scoop up Kim as he got out of the way.

Ratchet had retrieved a five-gallon plastic bucket, produced a thin tubule from somewhere around his waist, and was squirting a thin stream of something into it. “It looks like he’s peeing,” Kim said. Apparently, her internal censor was totally gone. She regretted the words immediately, of course, but Ratchet had heard and gave her a practiced glare.

“The main medical supply is contaminated. I carry a small emergency tank. For emergencies. Because I am a doctor.”

“Sorry,” Kim said. “It’s been a rough day.”

“I can’t understand why humans think waste removal is funny—”

“Enough,” Optimus said softly. “It has been a very…rough day.”

Ratchet finished his fuel collection, added a couple liters of the metal shavings he kept for the sparklings, and then gently lifted up the sphere of protomatter and plopped it in.

“Will Raf be all right, now that the Allspark is out of him?” Kim asked.

Optimus looked down at her for a long moment. “The Allspark and Raf are still together.”

Kim shook her head. “No. Oh, no. He can’t keep doing this. It’s too much. He isn’t _growing_ right. You said so, a human body—”

“Soon,” Optimus said.

“Soon?”

“Yes. Soon.”

“You thought seven hundred years was soon!” Kim protested. “How long will it take to get that new Cube big enough to put—”

“You have generalized past your data. The infant Allspark Raf has given us is a copy, a clone. It is not a new host for the being Raf and the Allspark have become.”

Kim opened her mouth. Shut it. “Raf still has—and what are we going to tell his parents? It’s—” She glanced at her watch. “It’s dinner time. They’re going to miss him. He isn’t even in shape to call home—”

“Agent Fowler is handling the Equivale family.”

“You sent the FBI—”

“Agent Fowler is adept at telling humans comfortable lies.” Optimus paused. “In this case, it is a comfortable half-truth. His family will be collected and brought to the base in protective custody. They will be told that Raf has become involved with space aliens and has valuable information regarding an interstellar war. They will be kept safe until Rafael has finished his work here.” He sighed. “If you are willing, I will send you and Blaster to speak with them tomorrow.”

“Blaster.”

“He has made a study of putting humans at ease.”

Kim buried her face in her hands. “How long?” she asked. “How long will Raf….” How long would Raf be lying to has parents? How long would Raf be carrying an alien god?

“Soon. Sooner than we guessed.”

“’Soon’ is a really vague analog term. Soon in relation to…what?”

“When we locate the heart of Unicron, the Allspark will leave Raf and fulfill its greater purpose. We thought to deal with the Decepticons first, that Unicron, if he existed, was inactive, and that Raf would have more time to…find himself. Those calculations were wrong. We will move as quickly as we can. The extent to which Chaos is acting consciously is unclear. It is possible that attempts by those vulnerable to weaponize dark energon was…a generalized impulse. But we cannot risk waiting. The Allspark has created its replacement. It will leave Raf at the earliest opportunity.”

“Damn,” Kim said.

“I fervently hope not.”

Kim resettled herself cross legged in his palm and leaned back against his thumb (which was narrower than her back, so not completely comfortable, but she was tired.) She looked up. Optimus still wasn’t wearing most of his outer armor plating. It made his shape considerably less angular. “You okay?” Kim asked.

“Yes,” he said.

Kim straightened, realizing there had been no qualifiers on the answer or requests for clarification on the question. “Seriously, though, request status report.”

“I am not sure how I would describe it in English without employing religious terms I might misuse.”

Kim turned that over. “You’re…forgiven?” she suggested.

“No, I have been…brought into wholeness.” He released a soft protoform hum, like a sigh. “If I had ever imagined the Allspark having intentionality and consciousness, I would not have dared hope for a person with Rafael’s compassion and generosity.”

Kim looked back at Bumblebee’s berth. June had covered Raf with a blanket and started one of the IVs from the first aid kit. She now appeared to be reading Ratchet the riot act. There was finger-pointing.

“We need to tell her everything,” Kim said.

“I am disinclined. Until Raf and the Allspark are no longer integrated, his status must be kept secret.”

“You need a human with some kind of medical knowledge watching him.”

“If Ratchet agrees with your analysis—”

Before he finished the sentence, Ratchet had retrieved June from the berth and was carrying her into the corner for an intense conversation.

“Apparently so,” Optimus said.

“Raf should eat,” Kim said. How long ago had that hotdog been? “I should go to the dorm and find something.” What did she have that was nutrient dense? Nuts?

“Carly is bringing sandwiches and milk,” Optimus said.

***

It was nearly midnight when Kim walked Raf up to the dorm and settled him in her bed. Ratchet was overseeing a global defrag and reboot for Bumblebee. June, satisfied with Raf’s scan results, had left to pick up Jack from Miko’s host parents. 

Kim’s plan was to sleep on a balcony couch (it wasn’t the first time), but the light was on in the kitchen and she could hear movement. Setting her shoulders, she walked down the hall.

Carly, Maggie, Pierre, and Dr. Nomura were waiting in the kitchen. Dr. Nomura was washing the pasta pot. He set it aside and sat down at the table with the others.

“What’s going on?” Carly asked. “Why hasn’t Slipstream come back? Why is the military still on the other side of the silver line? Why is Raf sick? Was he exposed? Why has Ratchet shut us out of the system? Why—” Dr. Nomura cleared his throat softly, and she subsided.

Kim looked at them. She got out her phone. She was almost disappointed the charge was still fine, but that was mech power supplies. It was just to robust to use an excuse to put unpleasant things off. She called up the VOIP number she never used, opened ‘speaker,’ and set the phone on the table. The line didn’t ring, but the screen disappeared in a wash of fractals. Kim swallowed. “Sorry to bother you, Boss. You need to hear what I’m going to say.”

“Understood, Dr. Montgomery.”

Kim looked at her dormmates. Where to even start? She almost giggled. “So. There’s good news and bad news,” she began.

Maggie stood up, “How about you begin with why Fixit is passed out propped up against the wall in my room? How’s that for a start, mate? What’s wrong with him?”

“I assume he’s recovering from donating protomatter,” Kim began. “He probably gave as much as he could spare, and now he’s shut down to grow replacement. I guess, um, we’re starting with the good news. Our partners are rebuilding the Allspark. This is a big deal for them. Everyone who could donated…substance.”

Dr. Nomura stifled a frown and said mildly, “Protomatter from different mecha cannot be mixed. They cannot donate.” He was carefully not calling Kim a liar. Kim appreciated Japanese standards of politeness.

“They can’t donate to each other. And Ratchet can’t mix them. The Allspark can.”

“It was destroyed,” Maggie said. “It exploded. It left a crater more than ten meters across and killed Sentinel Prime. I’ve been to the site. I saw the body.

Kim glanced at her phone. The fractals swirled lazily. “There was…some left,” Kim said. “Raf has had it. They have been…working together. Raf worked out how to combine protomatter donations from all the individuals the Cube had sparked to start a new body for it.”

They stared at her.

Kim made herself return the look. “One of the parts of my job is to…minimize how much humans get freaked out by mech reproduction. I’m not telling you the whole truth, you’re right. I’m telling you the truth I understand as a human, censored for the more…uncomfortable parts. Also, I am minimizing Raf’s role. He’s a little boy. He hasn’t done anything wrong. And if we draw attention to him, we put him in danger.”

“We have to hide this from the Decepticons,” Pierre said.

Carly made a face. “We hide everything from the whole world.”

“So, wait,” Maggie said, “There’s another sparkling running around? A baby Allspark.”

Kim took a shaky breath. “Not running. Apparently, it doesn’t have components. No processor, no actuators, no energon pump or capillaries. No radio.”

“So, it’s a very _small_ , blank cube? What does it do? How does it do anything?”

Kim shook her head. “It’s not a cube. Mostly, right now it sits in a bucket with some energon making more protomatter.” She glanced at her phone, but no correction or admonition was forthcoming. “It looks like mercury and Pepto Bismol soup. You, know, that really bright, low viscosity energon they refine for medical use?” Kim grimaced. “I may have just blasphemed horribly.”

“ _I as well_ ,” Optimus said. “ _I am finding your description of our miracle highly amusing. But no, it is not yet growing protomatter. First it must alter its substance into fish hatchery—ah. Never mind_.”

Kim closed her eyes and sank into a free chair. “So, that’s the good news. There will be a new Allspark. They aren’t limited to one method of reproduction. And when they do find out about it, this will be the last straw for many Decepticons.”

She waited for their nods. Maggie said, “And the bad news?”

Kim glanced at her phone. “I’m … not sure what we’ve told NEST.”

“ _Nothing, as of yet_.”

“Oh.” Well, right. What _would_ you tell humans? Prophecies and alien gods would be a disaster on its own, never mind the reality of Unicron. “The Decepticons aren’t our biggest problem any more. There’s another alien on Earth. It’s…been here a long time. And we aren’t exactly sure what it is, or where it is. Or what its plan is. Or even if it is awake. Or alive, I guess, if we know what ‘alive’ means. But It is what was giving humans who thought in mech patterns nightmares and what made Ford… Yeah. What made Ford do that.”

“When you say a ‘a long time,’ you mean it arrived before the Decepticons? Or before the Allspark,” Carly asked.

Kim opened her mouth, shut it. Billions of years? That was not the sort of thing you wanted to tell NEST. “The Allspark….”

“We were estimating about 800 years on that,” Carly began, “although it might be as little as a hundred and fifty. That is one thing we always got vague answers to.”

Kim’s mouth was very dry. “There is evidence this alien….was messing with humans sometimes before the sixteen hundreds. Surely, it’s been here longer than the Allspark, maybe by a lot. And that’s part of the problem. It’s old. It’s really old. Cybertron knew it existed, but there aren’t any descriptions we can _use_. If they knew its size or what it was made of, I really think they would have told me—”

“ _Correct, Kim_.”

“Thank you. Right. It’s supposed to be incredibly powerful,” Planet Eater. Chaos Bringer. Absolute Entropy. “And I’d call foul, because how can you lose track of something like that, right? I think I’m going to have to write Keller a report on this, and what do I say? But the Quintesson occupation destroyed a lot of their records, and if it wasn’t a priority even then—”

“The Quintesson War was thousands of years ago,” Maggie protested.

“It’s here. Whatever it is,” Kim went on. “Now I’m wondering if it might be a magnetic field instead of a physical creature?” 

“ _Why do you think that_?” Optimus asked sharply.

“Because you can’t _find_ it.” Kim said. “You must have started looking when you found dark energon in Tennessee. The patrol patterns ramped up then, and they haven’t gone back yet. And the energon isn’t all in one place. Or the dark energon. It’s been found on every continent but Antarctica which is only scanned from space and doesn’t have any human activity tearing up the bedrock, so it might be there, too.”

She glanced at the phone. It was silent for several seconds. “ _We have not considered that possibility. Our literature assumes that both Primus and Unicron were corporeal_.”

Inwardly, Kim cringed. There were humans who, if they caught wind of the Cybertronic religious implications of Earth, would immediately demand a holy war against mecha or start worshipping them. Kim was not sure which would be worse. “Optimus, this is not, in any way, a theological issue for Earth. I’m sorry, but your baggage is not our issue. As far as humans are concerned, we have a problem with one large and dangerous alien hiding somewhere on Earth, and it has a reputation for destroying planets.”

“ _I see_.”

“As far as humans are concerned, the issue is finding it and killing it without destroying Earth’s magnetic field or whatever country it’s hiding under. And we have to do that before it wakes up and takes the offensive.”

“ _That is not a completely inaccurate interpretation of our situation, yes.”_

“NEST is going to ask you if the Decepticons are waking it up on purpose.”

“ _I do not have enough data to extrapolate Megatron’s motives_.”

Kim nodded slowly. “The good news about the bad news is, the Allspark might be able to help with the…hidden monster problem. And there is no evidence so far that It can influence humans who don’t speak Cybertronix or haven’t encountered dark energon. So. Things might not end badly.”

Carly slumped over the table, hiding her face behind her arms. “Oh, god.” Pierre hugged her.

Maggie paced to the sink and back. “Did Fixit know?”

“ _He knew it was a possibility. Faced with a lack of conclusive or even compelling evidence, and given that both the Allspark and the Matrix did not raise the alarm, the matter was not a priority_.”

“That’s your story, and you are sticking to it,” Dr. Nomura said dryly.

“That is what is going in my report. I’m trying to keep their religion out of it as much as I can,” Kim said. “NEST does not need to be reminded that Prime isn’t the equivalent of a general or a king, but a pope or a Dalai Lama. But mecha do take their religion _very_ seriously. My report will say that…religious issues have interfered with analysis.”

“Wait a moment,” Pierre said. “I’m sure that’s not fair.”

“ _But it is necessary, and, from your perspective, correct. It is an excuse that will allow Humans to feel confident in their own strategies._ I _am fighting an ancient evil my people have feared form the dawn of time. But_ you _are only dealing with yet another alien incursion.”_

Kim looked at the phone for a long moment, shrugged, looked at the humans waiting to hear something useful. But Kim had nothing left to tell them. She picked up the phone, retrieved a pear and a bottle of water from the fridge, and retreated back to the balcony and sat down on the couch.

“ _Kim? The resolution on your phone’s mic is not high enough for me to gauge your level of distress_.”

“You must not, ever, tell a human that it is possible Unicron made us on purpose. Or by accident.”

“ _Kim, I have told you; I do not care. Your origin does not matter. Your people are not my enemies_.”

Kim smiled a little. “Yes. Thank you. I love you, too. But that isn’t the point. You can’t tell humans.”

“ _I have just agreed not to engage in speculation to humans_.”

“And this is why: Optimus, if humans get the idea that Unicron made us, somebody will start worshiping It. Him. Whatever.”

“ _I would be appalled, but it is possible Megatron is seeking an alliance with Him. And the only reason Megatron would not fold himself before the Unmaker is his own arrogance_.”

“Hm,” Kim said. “Well, that sucks.”

“It does, indeed.”

~TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Turns out it is harder to write cosmic horror when the president isn't on the dark triad. The mood much less ominous than I've been expecting.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, Martha, for your kindness and help.


End file.
